Law department relationship to ethics and compliance heads

During the summer of 2005, 412 inside corporate counsel responded to an online survey sponsored by ACC and Corpedia, a provider of ethics and compliance training. Some 85 percent of those respondents were at US-based companies; and 60 percent were with publicly-traded companies.

One finding was that “32 percent of all organizations have a dedicated Chief Ethics Officer as well as Chief Compliance Officer and approximately one-third of the time these duties and titles are handled by separate individuals.” I think this means that one-third have two Chiefs and one-third combine the posts.

The report summary does not say whether either of those Chiefs are sometimes the general counsel. (See my posts in 2005 on ethics: Aug. 27 and reputational risk, Sept. 10 and Chief Governance Officers, Oct. 29 and the OECG survey, Nov. 16 and Raytheon’s general counsel, and Dec. 19 on BP’s law department and ethics training.)