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Gatekeepers, Cultural Captives, Or Knaves? Corporate Lawyers Through Different Lenses, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Studying the behavior of high-status corporate lawyers is challenging. Much writing (including some of my own) addresses the risk of lawyer enabling of client misconduct by drawing from work in behavioral ethics suggesting that at least some apparent complicity is without full awareness of the impropriety. Is this naïve? The first part of this essay pushes harder on consciousness by looking more closely at the lengthy continuum—not a binary yes/no—in the awareness of wrongdoing risk as heavily influenced by the “slippery slope.” Looking at corporate lawyers’ professional responsibility through this lens has some interesting, and as far as I can …