Financial Markets and the Ethics of Legal Practice

Relying on extensive interviews with partners and senior associates working in major international law firms, this book shows how corporate lawyers wield significant influence, materially impacting the contractual terms of multi-billion dollar international financial market transactions. Since these terms govern the allocation and pricing of risk between market participants, it follows that ethical lapses by these lawyers have the potential to create negative externalities that can cause significant harm to society. At the same time, these powerful lawyers and firms remain somewhat opaque, and relatively little is understood about their ethics and effect on markets. This book, written by a scholar of the legal profession and financial law, and for many years a partner of a major international law firm, sets out to explore what corporate lawyers actually do, why they do it and the broader implications – including for financial markets - of what they do.