Non-Practicing Company Lawyers In Growing Ethical Gap

Professional regulations should be established for lawyers with non-legal positions, University of North Carolina law professor Dana Remus suggests in an article set to be published in the Duke Law Journal. Increasingly blurred boundaries between law and business are putting non-practicing lawyers in positions where their training is being used, but they are not held accountable by a set code of ethics, such as when a lawyer works in corporate compliance but is not required to report company wrongdoing to superiors. Heightened disclosure requirements, new rules governing transitions into non-legal roles, and new rules creating conduct floors for all licensed lawyers, practicing or not, are some of the solutions Remus proposes.