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Top 5 In House Scandals of 2017

By George Khoury, Esq. on January 08, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Every year, without fail, there will always be scandals that result from in-house attorneys dropping the ball, or maybe just not doing their jobs well enough.

Maybe you can't always blame the attorneys for the mistakes of the top level brass; after all, most in-house attorneys are relegated to specific functions rather than top level decisions. Basically, if you've read between the lines, it's the general counsel that are to blame.

And since learning from our mistakes is the best way to avoid making them again, below you can find five of the top corporate legal scandals from 2017 that you can learn from.

Volkswagen Exec Arrested in Diesel Scandal

The VW emissions scandal left the company facing not just a nightmarish PR problem, but high level execs faced serious criminal legal trouble. There's a lesson to learn in there somewhere.

How Nondisclosure Agreements Make Weinsteins Possible

The Harvey Weinstein scandal brought to light how aggressive in house lawyering can allow bad actors to continue acting bad. When consequences get avoided, lessons rarely get learned.

Uber Blew Tire With Data Breach Cover-Up

Uber faced quite a few scandals over the course of 2017, but perhaps the biggest one involved the data-breach cover up, or perhaps it was the fraud lawsuit from one of their major investors, or maybe when Uber fired an employee at the center of a social media scandal.

The Rolls-Royce (of) Foreign Bribery Scheme(s)

When Rolls-Royce employees are involved in foreign bribery schemes, one expects quite a bit more than what really happened here. Sadly, though this is technically a Rolls-Royce bribery scheme, Rolls-Royce cars are no longer made by Rolls-Royce and thus, the car-maker is not actually involved in the scandal.

Lawyer Mistakenly Sent SEC Memo to Reporter

Some scandals you just can't make up, and in our digital age, they are about as common as group texts that you keeping getting added to no matter how you try to avoid it. It seems that attorneys are prone to accidentally sending confidential info to reporters at major news outlets.

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