The Corporate Counsel Committee of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section is presenting a CLE program at the Business Law Section’s Spring Meeting. The program is co-sponsored by 23 additional Committees of the Business Law Section. The program is entitled “Ethics and Privilege Issues Which Confront Inside and Outside Corporate Counsel” and it is scheduled for Friday, March 27, 2020 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Boston.
At the program, ten General Counsel of major corporations will provide practical advice and strategies. This program is designed to help business lawyers do their jobs better and faster while fulfilling their ethical obligations and professional responsibilities. The program will focus on improving the quality and maximizing the value of legal services for corporate clients. The panelists will engage in a candid discussion about particular ethical and privilege dilemmas which corporate counsel frequently encounter. The program will identify significant ethics and privilege challenges which delivery of corporate legal services presents and will show business lawyers how to select and implement strategies which address those challenges as effectively as possible. The format for the program will be two 60 minute interactive panel discussions in which the panelists will respond to questions from the moderator. This format is intended to encourage a lively give and take among the panelists, the moderator, and the audience.
The Chair of this program is Robert L. Haig of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in New York. The panelists include the following General Counsel of major corporations: Matthew A. Aufman, Vice President and General Counsel, Welch Foods Inc.; Wendy Cassity, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, Nuance Communications, Inc.; Erika Geetter, Vice President, General Counsel, and Board Secretary, Boston University; Karen A. Kalita, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Cabot Corporation; Jamie W. Katz, General Counsel, Beth Israel Lahey Health, Inc.; Jonathan I. Mishara, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, FM Global; Paul C. Nightingale, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, HP Hood LLC; Jay Tangney, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Suffolk Construction Company, Inc.; Larry Weiss, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, Analog Devices, Inc.; and Steven H. Wright, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
The first session of this program is on “Ethics.” This session will focus on the ethical expectations of the corporate client as well as systems and practices to promote ethical conduct within a corporation and between inside and outside corporate counsel. Topics will include conflicts of interest and waivers, positional and issue conflicts, lawyer withdrawal and disqualification, preservation of confidences and secrets of the client, representing clients within the bounds of the law, exercising independent professional judgment, discovery and evidence, whistle-blowing, and ethical issues in billing and collection and in international legal representation and compliance.
The second session of this program is on “Ethics and Privileges.” This session will include additional discussion of the ethics topics referred to above and will also focus on practical advice from the legal ethical perspective for protecting privileged communications and materials. The panelists will discuss how the attorney-client privilege, the attorney work product doctrine and other privileges protect attorney-client communications and related materials from disclosure. Topics will include Model Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 1.13, the corporation as the client for privilege purposes, the distinction between legal advice and business advice, the rights of directors, officers, and employees to assert or waive the privilege, maintaining confidentiality, common situations in which a corporation risks waiving privilege, regulatory matters and government investigations, and special issues relating to technology and electronic data.