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> legal team wants everyone to behave ethically at all times

do you really believe that? compliance under scrutiny, more like it




Having worked with many lawyers... for the most part, yeah. Legal wants you to behave ethically at all times, not because they necessarily have some ideological commitment to ethics (though some do), but because it keeps the company out of lawsuits.

The overwhelming goal of a company's legal department is "don't get sued", followed by "if sued, lose as little money/leverage as possible".

In general the lawyer in the room is going to be far more risk-averse than the engineers, product people, sales people, or marketers.

The trick is that outside of some limited circumstances the legal department at companies are not the final say. Many lawyers who "go in house" (i.e., quit a private outside firm and go work directly for a company) find this frustrating. They come into a room, say "don't do that", and then a few weeks/months/years later someone did it and now they have to prepare for a lawsuit.


The best job is sitting around and doing nothing. So ideally yes.

But sure, ethically speaking when things get heated they will exploit every loophole they can find to avoid liability. So, lawful evil?


Most corporate law guidance is about risk mitigation, not about ethics. Less activity generally translates to less risk.

You can see a similar phenomenon with security professionals. True, the only secure computer is one disconnected from the Internet, turned off, put in a Faraday cage, on the moon, under armed guard - but that's not useful.


> under armed guard

Get rid of the guard. They might turn the computer on.


> The best job is sitting around and doing nothing.

That sounds like a terrible job.


Well you can take it as literally or figuratively as you wish. Depends on the person.


Even if everyone in the company magically complied with the wishes of the legal department, they would still have work to do. Defending the company against frivolous lawsuits and incoming regulations, suing competitors and other bad actors outside of the company, writing and evaluating contracts, and any internal legal consultation needed.




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