Brian Burton, the new general counsel of Daimler Trucks North America LLC, keeps a comic from The New Yorker on his desk. The comic shows two hunters watching a third, who has been picked up and decapitated by a dragon. One of the remaining hunters looks over at his companion and says, “This tarnishes his legacy as a great hunter.”

“I keep that on my desk because at any time, you can make a big mistake, and there goes your legacy as a great lawyer,” Burton says.