In-house lawyers may deal constantly with corporate policies, but win no friends

"Twenty-nine percent of the corporate lawyers [attending a conference] believe policies and procedures are a necessary evil -- but believe they are evil. Forty-nine percent believe the policies and procedures are not completely worthless in influencing employee behavior, but almost." That hurts. Inside lawyers often have their hand in corporate policies, be it to set them in motion, draft them, vet them, or interpret them. How discouraging to labor on what everyone else regards as millstones around their neck!

James Nortz, the director of compliance for Bausch and Lomb, james.a.nortz@bausch.com provided these gloomy data points in ACC Docket, Vol. 28, Sept. 2009 at 104. Nortz added that according to his survey, “Sixty-three percent of the respondents indicated that if all their corporations policies and procedures were to ‘suddenly disappear,’ no one would notice. Twenty-eight percent indicated that there would be ‘jubilation and rejoicing in most corporate locations.’” The hurt increases.