Can a company's lawyer develop an ethical corporate culture? Lynn D. Lieber makes that case The Corporate Counselor published on the Law.com site.

Basically, the line is that corporate counsel is in a good position to build a more ethical company and can do so by enlisting outside help, taking the pulse of the corporate culture and ensuring that all employees know what's expected, setting measurable criteria for the assessment of the company's compliance program, putting in place mechanisms for feedback from all levels of the company, and playing a key role in company meetings and training programs.

"Corporate counsel are in a unique position to institute a robust, comprehensive compliance program, encourage corporate leaders to act in a manner consistent with the spirit of the program and garner feedback from all levels of the organization to ensure that the compliance programs are successful in practice, not just in policy."

It's a neat argument but the problem with mixing the roles of lawyers and ethics officers is that the two come from different spaces. Business ethics is more than compliance with the law. Remember, Hewlett-Packard's ethics officer in the lead up to the scandal, Kevin Hunsaker, was also the company's senior counsel.

I examine the problem in this blog entry here.

Certainly, a corporate counsel can be involved in developing an ethical culture. But just relying on the lawyers might be asking for trouble.