Societal issues are also the ultimate test of corporate citizenship—of whether a company can carry out the essential mission of global capitalism: fusing high performance with high integrity and sound risk management. 

Many business people are appalled at the current state of our politics. Few, however, would admit that the “business community” is responsible, in part, for our dysfunctional political culture. And fewer yet may be prepared to think about how business can take steps—in concert with other political actors—to help soothe the distemper.

A corporate culture failure raises the questions of whether the in-house lawyers knew about the false-account practice.

The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension by Ben W. Heineman, Jr., former General Electric General Counsel and a founding father of the inside counsel movement, describes the past, present and future of this transformation. He takes a critical and careful look at the central role of General Counsel in advancingthe core mission of today’s corporation: to achieve high performance with high integrity and sound risk management. He explains how to resolve the critical tension facing inside counsel—being partner to the board of directors, the CEO and business leaders, but ultimately being guardian of the corporation.

The practical ideal of the modern general counsel is a lawyer-statesperson who is an outstanding technical expert, a wise counselor and an effective leader, and who has a major role assisting the corporation achieve the fundamental goal of global capitalism: the fusion of high performance with high integrity and sound risk management. For the lawyer-statesperson, the first question is: "Is it legal?" But the ultimate question is: "Is it right?"

We seek to define and give content to four ethical responsibilities that we believe are of signal importance to lawyers in their fundamental roles as expert technicians, wise counselors, and effective leaders: responsibilities to their clients and stakeholders; responsibilities to the legal system; responsibilities to their institutions; and responsibilities to society at large.

The role of General Motors Co. general counsel Michael Millikin in the deadly ignition-switch events should be a subject of intense interest and close scrutiny for lawyers working in, or for, complex corporations. But the recent—and I think overly simplistic— comments of prominent attorney John Quinn detract and do not add to a practical discussion about the responsibilities of general counsel.

The report by Anton Valukas on the unconscionable multiyear delay by General Motors Co. in addressing safety issues caused by a malfunctioning ignition switch, focuses on the culpability of individuals in the past, including engineers, investigators and lawyers in the vast GM bureaucracy. What is missing, strikingly missing, is the failure of GM leaders—past CEOs and senior GM officers, including the current general counsel—to create a safety culture that would have immediately surfaced and addressed the particular switch issue and, more importantly, their failure to long ago and on their own initiative take the myriad safety culture, system and process steps which Valukas recommends today.

As media observers explore every angle of Jill Abramson’s unceremonious sacking from the New York Times, one key Management 101 question is whether she was given a fair chance to address the management issues that, according to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr, led him to dismiss her.

Walmart’s bribery scandal, and the sweep of the current investigation, have made this case a poster-child for the snares of corruption facing global companies, putting it in the same category as the towering bribery scandal faced several years ago by Siemens. Many boards and CEOs from around the globe cite corruption as one of the top issues they face in current globalization efforts — in this sense, “the whole world is watching” the Walmart case carefully.