You can talk all you want about the importance of “tone-at-the-top.” People use that term all the time and everyone nods their heads in agreement. But what is the “top”? Is it the CEO? Is it the senior executives? Is it the corporate board? Is it the Audit/Compliance Committee? In my mind, there is only one mountain top in a company. The buck ends at...

People are good at complaining. People often say to themselves, “Things are not going my way,” and they love to feel sorry for themselves.    People who are professional victims are toxic. Why? Professional victims gain a sense of existence from their own suffering, rather than taking responsibility for their actions. What does this have to do with ethics and compliance? Believe it or not,...

If you want to inflame a discussion between general counsels and chief compliance officers, just try to develop a consensus on the importance of attorney-client privilege. A GC and a CCO will mouth the right words – of course, there are situations where we need to preserve the attorney-client privilege. We all agree on that.  As always, the devil is in the details. Let’s start...

Evan Lee, an Associate at The Volkov Law Group, joins us for a post on the new anti-human trafficking rules. Evan can be reached at [email protected]. His bio is here. Consistent with the US Government’s zero tolerance policy concerning human trafficking, a cadre of government agencies recently published a final rule amending the current Federal Acquisition Regulations provisions on human trafficking. Taking effect March 2,...

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. — Mark Twain Years ago (seems like eons), I wrote a column lamenting lawyers and compliance professionals who operate by telling their clients “No.” Of course, there are situations when you have to say “No.” But there are too many professionals who confuse providing advice with saying “No.”...

Companies and CCOs are starting to get the message – the best and most effective control against code and legal violations is a culture of ethics and compliance. Those are high-minded ideals for high-level executives. The C-Suite likes to embrace these ideals but the C-Suite needs to recognize a couple of realities – a culture of ethics and compliance does not occur overnight and does...

One of my favorite SNL skits from years ago was John Belushi as Henry Kissing, singing “Getting to Know You” with his arms around Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat – a true classic. The same can be said for the compliance world – “Getting to Know You” is an absolute must for five important corporate functions. Continuing with my obsession to define an “effective” ethics...

The golden ring for every chief compliance officer is an “effective” ethics and compliance program. But if you ask a CCO if the company’s compliance program is ”effective,” they will bow their heads and reluctantly admit, “No, we need to . . . [fill in the blank].” CCOs tend to be perfectionists. It comes with the mindset and the territory. They demand perfection from others...

The Supreme Court is about to send another shockwave in criminal law. No one suspected that the Roberts Supreme Court would become a pro-defendant court but with the support of some conservative justices, the tide against prosecutorial excess is strong. From my perspective, the most significant criminal case in the last twenty years was Booker, which gutted the US Sentencing Guidelines and made the guidelines...

No company wants a corporate monitor. If you ask any General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer or Chief Executive Officer, they can list an infinite number of alternative punishments they would rather suffer than have a corporate monitor. The idea of a corporate monitor is a good one. If you ask a company after the corporate monitor departs about the experience, many will tell you that...