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The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) is the world's largest organization serving the professional and business interests of attorneys who practice in the legal departments of corporations, associations, nonprofits and other private-sector organizations around the globe.

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Over the last 10 years companies have struggled with the structure of their ethics and compliance programs, including where they should be placed within the corporate structure (in the legal department or elsewhere?), to whom they should report (GC? Internal Auditor? CEO?), and the relationship of compliance staff to in-house counsel (including whether they should even be the in-house counsel). The struggle continues.

Does your company have a wellness program? This session will address federal and common state restrictions, and go through the strategies that will assist your company in developing a successful program, incorporating the Small Law Department Committee's InfoPak on this topic. In-house counsel that implement a program in their own companies may achieve fame and fortune for initiating a program that saves the company money and gets their employee base healthy. Who knows, in the process some may even develop a smaller waistline!

The crises in world financial markets, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley among other causes, all have contributed to a tremendous increase in the number of investigations overseen by corporate counsel. At the same time, the strategies deployed by some lawyers and investigators have landed them and their companies in trouble. What are the best strategies for fact finding? What are best practices for interviewing witnesses? What laws are relevant to investigations and how do they differ between states and countries?

With the increasing globalization of US business, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act continues to be the foundation for how companies must transact international business. While the United States has had the FCPA in place since 1977, the international community has joined together and has begun focusing their attention on anti-bribery issues. This session intends to provide an overview of the FCPA, a look into what the international community is doing to further improve international business and will provide attendees with a list of hot topics and a game plan on how to address them.

North American businesses face unprecedented uncertainty and economic challenges. At the same time, we anticipate the Obama administration will appoint aggressive new officials to oversee the antitrust enforcement machinery of the United States in the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Canada too, has proposed sweeping changes to its framework competition laws. This panel will highlight these changes, and provide a survival guide for legal counsel in companies seeking to navigate these changes in both countries during these challenging economic times.

Environmental laws for businesses in Ontario have changed and corporate officers and directors need to understand their personal and affirmative obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent environmental breaches. Offenses are punishable by fines, jail terms, or both, and officers and directors can be convicted for breaching this duty even if the company has not committed or been convicted of an offense under the Act. At the heart of this due diligence obligation is the requirement for an environmental management system.

The Pacific Rim includes many of the leading or emerging centers of trade including China, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and the United States. Our experienced international panel provided insight into trade in the Pacific Rim, with a focus on Australasian aspects, including an overview of recent developments in the region such as Free Trade Agreements and developments in competition laws.

Today’s ethical representation challenges aren’t simple and they hardly ever wear convenient name tags that allow you to easily identify them. Since bar regulations don’t provide much guidance in the corporate context, we offered you a series of professionally-acted hypotheticals that asked the audience to interactively navigate a series of ethical close calls. Help decide how our corporate counsel hero should investigate whistleblower allegations, supervise off-shored representations, advise on executive compensation, conduct employee interviews, and more.

Is a data theft or breach one of your company’s worst nightmares? Read the daily paper to see the serious ramifications that can occur under such a breach. What can and should you know about this subject matter and implement to help protect your client? This presentation provided a summary of the current state of the law (state and federal), a discussion of to whom the laws apply and the types of data that have to be protected, and a description of the technology that can be used to help compliance.

Your company may be or has been sued; now you must take steps to preserve documents. No task is potentially more important in terms of reducing both headline and economic risk. You face critical questions as to if, when, and how you should implement a document preservation notice and this panel of experts tackled them, such as: When and what type of investigation must a company undertake before determining that a threat is not credible and, therefore, that litigation is not “reasonably anticipated?” When is a corporate entity “on notice?” How do the courts view the parties’ efforts?

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