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.

Commentators and researchers have focused on the crucial role of the CEO in leading effective corporate action to promotehigh performance, high integrity, and sound risk management. What receives far less attention is that, more and more in our increasingly complex, volatile, and fully-globalized business world, the effectiveness of such action depends on a powerful partnership between the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the General Counsel (GC). This critical alliance needs and deserves much greater analysis and application.

The CFO-GC alliance has always been important because the finance function and the legal function are truly the nervous system of the corporation—sending critical signals to all parts of the company about the accuracy of the financials and compliance with law. But, the integration of finance and legal is even more consequential today because what the corporation can and cannot do across the globe is affected directly not just by financial and commercial issues which the CFO analyzes but, increasingly, by evolving “business and society” issues which the General Counsel and the corporate law department must address. These issues include legislation, regulation, litigation, enforcement, investigations, geopolitical risk, demands for ethical actions, and public criticism, affecting all the functions of the corporation in their interaction with all levels of global governments (central, regional, local). Especially in light of ever-increasing variety and intensity ofstakeholder demands on the corporation, these business and society issues, under the purview of the GC, must be closely fused with the CFO’s financial and commercial analysis to serve the CEO and top business leaders when they make and implement core strategic and operational decisions.

Corporations have been attacked from both right and left during the 2016 presidential election: on trade, on immigration, on campaign finance, on crony capitalism, on inequality. Fortune Editor and long-time political reporter Alan Murray says business-government relations in the U.S. are “easily the worst in the three decades I’ve covered them.” But the current across-the-spectrum, anti-corporate distemper and distrust is a global trend as reflected in the Brexit vote which overrode consensus concerns about injury to both UK and non-UK business.

In his 18 years as the top lawyer at General Electric, Ben Heineman helped transform the way people viewed in-house legal jobs, from a sleepy backwater into a prominent position with power equal to or surpassing law-firm partner roles.

Mr. Heineman, who retired in 2005, recently wrote a book codifying his thoughts on what’s changed in the relationship between law firm lawyers and their clients. “The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension” his fourth book, also delves into the responsibilities he believes general counsel have to not only think, “what’s legal?” but “what’s right?”

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.

A sampling of Belfer Center fellows and affiliates in the news.

All companies that operate internationally face a striking dual challenge in dealing with public policy: Nations across the globe enact an ever-changing, ever-expanding array of detailed legislation and regulation to protect workers, consumers, investors, and the public welfare, and these diverse rules shape what companies can and cannot do. Moreover, corporations are not trusted in this era of populist discontent because their role in shaping public policy is often seen as bought by money, shaped by elites, and concerned solely with private not public interests

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?"