Vetting Laterals

A rundown of recent cases that made headlines and some expert advice on how to avoid problems. “The decision to hire a lateral must be done with great care, with a full understanding of how badly it could go wrong. The vetting process is neither easy nor quick,” writes ethics and legal liability attorney Charles Lundberg. Advice in this article includes strict confidentiality and possibly eschewing email altogether at the negotiation stage. Treat lateral due diligence as seriously as you would due diligence for an M&A transaction, says one expert, and expect it take a comparable number of hours.