Duties and Responsibilities of a Corporate Lawyer

A corporate lawyer is a person who works for a corporate house or a company or a firm and specializes in corporate law. Corporate law is the study of how shareholders, directors, employees, creditors, and other stakeholders such as consumers, the community and the environment interact with one another. Company law involves the study of Companies Act 2013, etc. So, corporate law is a part of a broader company law.

It is the duty of corporate lawyers to understand the laws and regulations to help the company and their clients to work within the legal boundaries. The role of such lawyers is to ensure the legality of business practices and transactions. The other duties of corporate lawyers include ensuring viabilities of commercial transactions, advising corporations on their legal rights and duties, including the duties and responsibilities of the employers and other officers. In order to do the effective compliance, they must have knowledge of aspects of contract law, securities law, intellectual property rights, taxation law, accounting law, bankruptcy law, licensing, and the laws specific to the business of the corporations that they work for. He has to maintain the confidentiality between the company and the clients of the company. This is so because if the company clients are not assured of confidentiality, they will be less likely to seek legal advice.

Corporate lawyers work includes legal drafting, reviewing agreements, negotiating deals, and attending the meetings with the clients of the company. He handles the internal legal work of the company with fewer or no litigation work. However, he has to assist the external lawyers of the company in legal matters. Although they work for large companies, they may also be self-employed and contract themselves out to many different firms. Generally, they serve only one client, i.e., the corporation they work for. As a corporate lawyer, he is called upon to handle a variety of legal tasks including corporate taxes, mergers and acquisitions, corporate structure issues, employment law, and various other legal matters. They generally need to be knowledgeable in a wide range of legal fields and will need to be able to handle a large number of issues. Some corporations hire multiple lawyers depending on the work and requirement and each one of them is a specialist in one or two areas of corporate law. So, small corporations retain one or two lawyers while larger corporations may have more than one or two lawyers, each with their own specialty. Generally, corporations like banks, insurance companies, retail companies, hospitals, oil firms, and biotechnology companies, manufacturing companies, energy and communications companies require the full-time corporate lawyers.

In order to be a corporate lawyer it is essential that he must have a specialist course on corporate law and this can be done by getting a LLM degree after completing LLB course. A corporate law LLM course will generally include work on corporate and securities law, contracts and commercial law, intellectual property rights, banking laws, international trade laws and other areas.