公司法务律师：公司的保护人和指导人

A guardian and a guide

公司法律顾问：公司的保护人和引路人

ONCE upon a time, in-house corporate lawyers were dismissed as plodders. Partners at law firms make far more money. Only someone who couldn‟t ha ck it as a legal brain-for-hire would seek the dull security of a salaried job, people assumed. But the power of in-house lawyers has grown hugely in the past ten years. The chief legal officer (CLO) is now one of the mightiest figures in the C-suite.

曾几何时，当律师事务所的合伙人赚的盘满钵满的时候，公司法律顾问只能勉强度日。人们认为，只有那些能力一般的法律人才会满足于这一有保障的靠薪金度日的工作。不过，近10年来公司法律顾问的地位急速上升，首席法务官（CLO）目前已经是公司管理层中最牛的人之一。

The main reason is that the legal thicket has grown thicker. In America, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley act inserted federal law deep into corporate governance. The Dodd-Frank act of 2010 made running a financial business much more complicated. The penalties for rulebreaking have grown harsher, too. Companies can be turned inside out if a junior employee bribes someone on the other side of the world. Bosses can go to jail for infractions hardly anyone understands. America‟s mighty prosecutors can indict a corporation, thus destroying it before any accusation is aired in court. Add to this the endless threat of lawsuits, class-action or otherwise, and life-or-death battles over patents. The top lawyer is now part of the inner circle, and big firms are finding it worthwhile to build large and talented legal departments.

这主要是因为国家的法律越来越复杂和严密了。在美国，2002年《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》的颁布意味着联邦法已经开始插手公司治理，而2010年通过的《多德佛兰克法案》则使金融企业的运营更加错综复杂，并且违反这些法律的处罚更加的严厉。如果公司的一名初级雇员贿赂了什么人，公司的命运可能遭到沉着的打击。老板们可能因一般人很难理解的违法行为而锒铛入狱。美国强大的检察官对公司的指控，在提交法院之前就有可能使公司遭受重创。此外公司还面临着无休止的诉讼、集团诉讼或其他法律上的威胁，以及事关公司生死存亡的专利争夺战。目前，高级律师已经进入公司的核心管理层，一些大的公司也发现组建实力雄厚的法务部门是有必要的。

Meanwhile, the notion that all the clever lawyers are chasing fat fees at white-shoe law firms is passé. Those fees are under pressure, thanks to a glut of young lawyers, the use of technology and even offshoring. In-house jobs are now just as interesting, and demand saner hours.

与此同时，那种认为有才干的律师在律师事务所追逐暴利的观念已经过时。由于年轻律师供过于求，新技术甚至离岸外包的运用，那些高利润正在面临压力。而公司法律顾问的工作现在也非常吸引人，并且工作时间有规律。

Norman Veasey and Christine Di Guglielmo, a former judge and his former clerk, argue in a new book, “Indispensable Counsel”, that a CLO must be a “courageous Renaissance person”. By this they do not mean that he must fight the trial bar with one hand while painting frescoes with the other, but that he must perform more than one role. He must be a business partner and a guardian of corporate integrity. He (or she—20% of America‟s big-company CLOs are women) represents the entire corporate entity, not just its managers. He answers directly

to the board as well as to the boss. Professional ethics often require the CLO to say no to the other suits in the

C-suite. One CLO co mplained to Mr Veasey and Ms Di Guglielmo that: “They sometimes view you as the …Business Frustration Department‟.”

曾经担任过法官 Norman Veasey 和他的书记员Christine Di Guglielmo，在新出版的《不可缺少的法律顾问》一书中写道，首席法务官必须成为一个“勇敢的具有文艺复兴精神的人”。这并不意味着他仅能在法庭雄辩，还能在艺术方面有所建树，而是指他必须执行完全多个角色。他必须既是商业伙伴人，又是公司诚