On November 13, 2023, the School of Juris Master held a lecture on “Ethics of Corporate Lawyers and Issues in Client Relationships” as part of its expert forum series activities in Room 0412 of the Teaching and Library Complex Building on Xueyuan Road Campus. Prof. Loughrey, Dean of the Law School at Queen’s University Belfast, gave a lecture, with Prof. XU Shenjian, Dean of the School of Juris Master in CUPL, serving as the guest commentator, and Dr. YE Ningyao, a faculty member of the School of Juris Master, chairing the event. Students enrolled in programs for foreign-related lawyers and international arbitration of the School in 2023 attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Dr. YE Ningyao introduced Prof. Joan Loughrey to the students and extended a warm welcome to her.

Prof. Joan Loughrey discussed the role and responsibility of corporate lawyers when their clients’ interest conflict with the public interest, from the aspects of the role that corporate lawyers should play in safeguarding public interest when providing consulting service for their clients, as well as the support for promoting the public interest in supervisory regulations.

Prof. Joan Loughrey began by discussing the role of corporate lawyers in the UK in serving their clients, emphasizing that lawyers often prioritize the legality of client behavior over the public interest. This suggests that the work of corporate law is not about ethics and morals, causing negative consequences at multiple levels. She provided examples such as Standard Chartered’s involvement in assisting the Iranian government with money laundering and the scandal of the UK Post Office to illustrate the severe consequences arising from the absence of ethics among lawyers.

She analysed the unequal power of lawyers in criminal defense and within companies, pointing out that corporate lawyers are required to protect client interests and provide consulting services, but they are not held accountable for the client's ultimate actions. In practice, lawyers often lack independence when working for a company, which leads to their “creative compliance”. Faced with unlawful behavior of their companies, lawyers should not remain silent but should play a proactive role in improving corporate governance and regulating company behavior.

Lastly, Prof. Joan Loughrey elaborated on the functions of relevant legal regulation rules. For example, according to the obligations imposed on lawyers by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulation rules, lawyers should prioritize the public interest over client interests and uphold the dignity of the law when conflicts of interest arise. However, the supervision of activities in large law firms is still insufficient, and, generally, there remains a lack of legal ethics in society. The conflict between public interest and corporate interests remains an unsolved problem.

Students raised questions regarding the practical effect of legal and educational regulations on lawyer ethics, the role of lawyers in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) corporate governance, the application of AI in legal work, etc. Prof. Joan Loughrey provided detailed answers to each question, from which the students benefited a lot.

Dean XU Shenjian congratulated Prof. Joan Loughrey on her successful lecture and made a summary. He thought that the ethics of corporate lawyers need to be strengthened, and gave examples of the Enron Incident and China Evergrande’s Debt-Crisis to highlight the ethical challenges faced by corporate lawyers. He acknowledged that Joan Loughrey’s lecture can help us reflect on the ethics of lawyers in China, particularly corporate lawyers.

In 2002, to address the challenges resulting from China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the pilot program for corporate lawyers was initiated, so as to improve relevant legal systems in enterprises. This marked the beginning of the development of the corporate lawyer system. However, corporate lawyer development progressed slowly since then. In 2016, the “Opinions on Promoting the Legal Adviser System and the Government Lawyer and Corporate Lawyer System” was issued. From then on, the corporate lawyer system was deeply advanced in state-owned enterprises and ushered in the rapid development phase. Building upon this, the Ministry of Justice issued the “Corporate Lawyer Management Measures” in December 2018 to further enhance the function of corporate lawyers. In 2021, the Ministry of Justice released the “Notice on Strengthening Corporate Lawyers’ Participation in Corporate Compliance Management”, emphasizing the significance, overall requirements, and key challenges in this regard. These documents entrust corporate lawyers with new responsibilities and missions, enabling them to play a unique role in corporate compliance management. Against this backdrop, it can be expected that the system of corporate lawyers will witness faster development, and their position and responsibilities in enterprises will become increasingly important.

Therefore, it is crucial to focus on the ethics of corporate lawyers based on China’s national conditions and drawing on relevant experiences abroad, so as to achieve modern corporate governance. XU encouraged students to continuously explore and focus on legal ethics in their studies, with a view to laying a solid foundation and preparing themselves for their future careers.

Finally, a group photo was taken to mark the occasion. The lecture then came to an end amidst warm applause.

Photo Source: CAO Huiqun, YANG Miao

Text Provider: LI Xinyue

Editor: LI Xinyue

Initial Reviewer: WU Di

Final Reviewer: LIANG Min