Successful CLE Presentation

For the past month and a half, I’ve been putting together a new ethics-geared continuing legal education seminar entitled Legal Ethics and Corporate Officer Fraud. Researching and preparing for this seminar was fun for me for a couple of reasons:

First off, this is the first ethics seminar I’ve developed, so getting it right was important. And secondly, I find the subject matter extremely interesting and there is so much fraudulent activity currently out there that I had fun sorting through the information.

Wednesday evening I presented the seminar for the first time to the Los Angeles Paralegal Association (LAPA) Corporate/South Bay Section. My thanks to the folks at LAPA for allowing me the opportunity to provide this seminar to their members. This was a great group of people who expressed a lot of interest in the topic and who, I hope, received some good information and thought provoking ideas.

Corporate officer fraud is extremely prevalent in the news these days. As a result, I was able to provide a number of examples of recent cases, all of which included involvement in the fraud by in-house or outside counsel.

The issue for attorneys and paralegals is what action should they take if they become aware of or suspect that corporate officer fraud is taking place in a company they work for or represent. Obviously, attorney-client privilege plays a huge role in the possible actions that are available to an attorney. I discussed the possible options and the issues that should be considered in these circumstances as well as the applicable rules and regulations which may apply.

I thoroughly enjoyed giving the presentation and again want to thank LAPA for inviting me!