Litigation Ethics: Representing Corporations and Other Organizational Clients, Part 1 of 3

Representing corporations is not easy. A company’s legal problems can be complex. But solving them is often not the biggest challenge. Legal problems aside, lawyers who represent corporations practice in an ethics minefield. If you don’t watch out, you can easily step on an ethics issue buried just beneath the surface. Even if you’re very careful, these ethics landmines can still explode. The dilemmas may not be of your own making. Sometimes we inherit them. Sometimes our clients, our partners, our associates, or circumstances beyond our control impose them on us. Sometimes we simply fail to recognize them, either because we’re not fully aware or because they do not trigger a red flag. In this three-part series, several of these landmines will be examined.