Allison Herren Lee is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on her recent remarks at PLI’s Corporate Governance – A Master Class 2022. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Lee, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Staff.
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money: (Over-) Zealous Representation by Corporate Lawyers [1]
Thank you Brian [Breheny] for the introduction and to the Practicing Law Institute for having me today. Before I begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the on-going humanitarian disaster in Ukraine. My thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, who have demonstrated impossible bravery, and with those of you who may have friends or relatives affected by this crisis.
It’s a privilege to address my fellow members of the bar. This privilege is very meaningful to me personally in part because of my unexpected path into the legal profession and my deep regard for the ideals of public service that our profession represents.
I do not come from a family of lawyers; in fact my parents did not even attend college. I never laid eyes on an actual lawyer during my childhood. What I knew about them came from TV shows, which means I assumed their jobs were to cleverly question witnesses at trial until they confessed to the crime for which another had been charged. Despite (or maybe because of) this misperception, I secretly dreamed of becoming a lawyer and was awed to the point of reverence by the profession. As I worked my way through college and eventually, in my late thirties, through law school, I began to better understand what lawyers do and what it means to be a member of a “profession”—how the calling stood apart from other businesses principally because advocating for fidelity to the law is, at its core, a form of public service. [2] Taking this to heart, I launched an initiative in law school that led to the adoption of a requirement for students to complete pro bono work as part of the curriculum.
I have lived the experience of law from the perspectives of an outsider with no idea of what lawyers do, a student, a client, a securities law practitioner, an enforcement lawyer (both civil and criminal), and now as a Commissioner helping to shape regulatory policy. My belief in the ideals of the profession—ideals that I know you all share—has only grown stronger with time.