Disputes involving board infighting, or former board members departing and then lobbing bombs at the board, put general counsel in an extraordinarily difficult position, legal ethics experts say.

It’s a scenario that happens from time to time, sometimes even with members of the same family attacking one another. For example, at Morton Grove, Illinois-based Lifeway Foods, a maker of drinkable kefir, Ludmila Smolyansky quit the board in May and publicly filed a letter blasting CEO Julie Smolyansky—her own daughter—for talking a good game about massive growth potential but failing to deliver.