A provocative academic paper points a finger at corporate counsel and their outside lawyers for helping create and perpetuate the opioid crisis that's killed more than 500,000 people since 2000 and left scores devastated by addiction.

Elise Bernlohr Maizel, an assistant professor of law at the Michigan State University College of Law, does more than skewer lawyers involved in Purdue Pharma's 1996 rollout of the painkiller OxyContin, which it marketed as less addictive than it actually was.