The American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law and the New York City Bar Association are co-sponsoring an innovative program that addresses the tough counseling, corporate governance, and ethics issues faced today by corporations in the antitrust law area.

This program will provide antitrust counselors with an overview of the developing law relating to "corporate governance" and will illustrate and facilitate open discussion of best practices/best processes for working through the most common and problematic antitrust scenarios faced by corporate clients. Experienced lawyers, ethics/compliance officers, and professors will walk the audience through a series of common antitrust scenarios that companies face-civil litigation, criminal antitrust investigations, M&A transactions, and counseling on general business conduct-highlighting techniques for assessing and managing (without inadvertently expanding) legal risk in the context of dealing with ethical and corporate governance issues. Questions addressed will include: "Who in the company can or should make the decision to proceed with a particular course of action?", "At what point should or must the Board of Directors and outside Shareholders be notified of the increased risk of a particular matter?", "Is my company going to be under increased pressure to waive attorney/client privileges in order to succeed in its objective?" "An investigation just closed-can we destroy all documents related to the matter?", "Are there international antitrust implications to our proposed course?", and "What immediate actions do I need to take to preserve potential evidence?"

Given that compliance training has become critically important in the management of corporate ethics and governance risks, this program will also include a session on compliance training and highlight the state of the art in compliance programming. The program will conclude with an interactive session led by the faculty in which the audience will be given an opportunity to raise for discussion their own best-practice suggestions or complex issues they have faced or are currently facing.

The goal of the program is not to teach the current state of antitrust law, but rather to focus on how the premier antitrust lawyers provide their clients the best possible chance of success, while avoiding potential ethical and legal pitfalls, and provide participants with practical tools to help them deal with their own antitrust problems while managing corporate and ethical requirements. The program faculty will include outstanding, highly experienced antitrust corporate counsel, outside counsel, compliance and ethics officers, professors, and government enforcers.