The board’s audit and compliance committee may benefit from a briefing on several new developments that raise important risk and compliance oversight issues. These developments affect upstream reporting relationships of the general counsel; the expanding role of the general counsel; increased liability concerns of compliance officers; and a prominent new report on compliance program effectiveness. The typical committee charter will be implicated by each of these developments, and the general counsel is well situated to present this briefing.
1. “Reporting Up” This first development, arising from a recent decision of a state bar disciplinary commission, implicates the “upstream” organizational reporting obligations of the general counsel’s office to, and through, the committee.
