This is the second in a series of five columns drawn from a one-semester course on the Delaware campus of the Widener University School of Law, teaching students what it’s like to work in a law department and helping them learn some of the skills required to do so.
The first two units after the introductory class addressed the role of in-house counsel in the compliance area. I decided to assume that the sort of company I would be using as a model here was of a sufficient size that it would have at least a compliance officer. Thus the in-house lawyer would be providing legal support to that function but not have responsibility for the function itself. During the first briefing session I gave the class a background lecture on the concept of a compliance function, including a description of the 7+ elements of a compliance program—policy, high-level responsibility, care in delegation, training, audit, investigation, enforcement and continuous improvement—and discussed how the lawyer might be involved in these elements. I then moved on to provide a background to antitrust/competition law, on the (correct) supposition that none of the students had ever taken an antitrust course.
