The $215 million settlement that Goldman Sachs agreed to this week to settle gender-bias class action litigation is enough to make any general counsel shudder.

It's a reflex that legal chiefs have gotten to know well, such as when Google last year agreed to pay $118 million to settle gender-bias litigation. Gender-bias settlements in the tens of millions of dollars almost seem routine these days.

So what is the lesson for legal departments? For starters, it's to be proactive—companies should be closely scrutinizing their own pay practices and fixing potential problems, rather than waiting for outsiders to seize on inequities, employment attorneys say.