Symposium Brings Together Law and Business Scholars to Examine Trends in Corporate Compliance

No longer a new or emerging phenomenon, corporate compliance has become an essential component of corporate life. Compliance has become increasingly complex, and its failures can have dramatic consequences for a firm. At the recent symposium, Emerging Trends in Corporate Enforcement and Corporate Compliance, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Business Law & Regulation and the Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law, experts from law schools and business schools explored the critical issues and challenges facing the field and shared their research, knowledge of compliance practice, and diverse perspectives on corporate compliance.

“Because compliance has become such a broad field—and such an entrenched responsibility in corporations—it was important to bring together scholars who employ different methodological tools to critically examine external and internal efforts to prevent, and respond to, wrongdoing within firms,” said Professor Miriam Baer, who organized the symposium with Professor James Fanto. Professors Andrew Gold and Roberta Karmel moderated two of the panels.

The symposium participants included a compliance consultant and former DOJ prosecutor; a former SEC Commissioner; a former criminal defense attorney; two scholars who discussed the American Law Institute’s project on compliance; and several scholars who teach at business schools.

Topics covered included new technologies to detect “networks” between corporate employees and the privacy issues such monitoring obviously raises; the transformation of sexual harassment and other #MeToo issues into a direct responsibility for the company’s compliance program; and the ways in which a responsive compliance program can improve productivity. Panelists also discussed how compliance obligations have broadened in terms of geography and purpose, how certain types of firms could be particularly vulnerable to wrongdoing, and how certain enforcement tools could encourage or defeat compliance outcomes, or leave them otherwise untouched.

“The real-world comments and questions that were posed by alumni working in the compliance field highlighted compliance’s importance and suggested practical lessons for the many students in attendance who might wish to work in this field,” said Fanto, who delivered remarks to close the day-long symposium.

The articles and essays written by the presenters for the Symposium will be published in an upcoming issue of Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law.