Business Scandal and Crisis Management: Case Studies in Compliance

• Semester: Fall 2026
• Course ID: 296W
• Credit Hours: 2
• Unique: 31704

Registration Status: Open

Description

Many law school courses deal with either (1) asserting or defending against responsibility for something that went wrong—the contract that was arguably breached, the board of directors that may have failed in its responsibilities, the can of soda that exploded, the title to property that was defective, or (2) the “plumbing” of the legal system—civil and criminal procedure, evidence, remedies, appeals and the like.  This course has some of those elements, but also some fundamentally different elements: it deals with the internal control functions—described by one author as the functions that establish and confirm “conformity between . . . action and a rule or standard,” the latter being determined by law, regulation or an organization’s policies. These roles within an organization—compliance, internal audit and many parts of the legal department— principally focus on gaining an awareness of potential problems and establishing processes to avoid them, thereby avoiding resultant crises for the organization.

These functions are responsible for establishing policies and procedures designed to avoid, or detect at an early stage, instances in which personnel fail to conform to mandates established by law, regulation or organizational policies. As such, the functions include counseling personnel when questions arise and establishing “early warning” systems to detect and respond to instances of variance from required standards. They, but especially the compliance function, increasingly provide high-level, challenging employment opportunities for lawyers.

The course will examine the roles of these functions within an organization and their relationships to other organizational roles and to regulatory agencies. It will also examine a number of current or recent situations in which problems—crises for the organizations involved—have been uncovered and will consider how more effective programs might have unearthed them earlier, in time to avoid the crisis. Quite often (and contrary to the popular image), the best service a lawyer can perform for her client, but one that is invisible to public awareness, is to foresee a potential issue and counsel practices that avoid its occurrence. This course will provide tools that are important to that endeavor. The course will require a final exam (open book without internet access). Course materials will be provided by the instructor and there will be no casebook.