Fordham Law Review Volume 79 Issue 5 Article 3 November 2011 Taking the Business Out of Work Product Michele DeStefano Beardslee Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Michele DeStefano Beardslee, Taking the Business Out of Work Product, 79 Fordham L. Rev. 1869 (2011). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol79/iss5/3 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. TAKING THE BUSINESS OUT OF WORK PRODUCT Michele DeStefano Beardslee* Over the past fifteen years, a common set of questions has surfaced in different areas of scholarship about the breadth of the corporate attorney’s role: Should the corporate attorney provide business advice when providing legal advice? Should the corporate attorney provide counsel related to other disciplines such as public relations, social responsibility, morals, accounting, and/or investment banking? Should the corporate attorney prevent corporate wrongdoing? Questions like these resound in the scholarship addressing the risks and benefits of multi-disciplinary partnerships, gatekeeping, moral counseling, ancillary services, and the application of the attorney-client privilege. When looked at in combination, these segregated discussions equate to an unidentified but burgeoning debate about the proper role of the corporate attorney and whether a distinction can or should be made between doing business and practicing law.