Ethical Dilemmas of Corporate Counsel

Abstract

In my opinion, the role of corporate counsel is among the most complex and difficult of those functions performed by lawyers. This is not to overlook the difficulties entailed in the role of the advocate, particularly in criminal cases, of the family counselor, for example, in estate planning for spouses in a second marriage, or of the lawyer for a small business, particularly a business that has passed into a second or third generation of family ownership. Nevertheless, the role of corporate counsel entails intrinsic ambiguities that must be worked through in the ordinary course of a day's work with far greater frequency than in most other practice settings.