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Minimising corruption through taking action within the legal profession is different from other sectors, because lawyers have a duty to defence their clients regardless of whether they may be guilty or not.

Here are two contributions proposing ways to make progress.

The first is a contribution by Argentinian lawyer Sofia Tirini. She argues in a blog, here, posted at FCPA blog on November 27th 2019, that clients of law firms should require their law firms to have robust compliance programmes. In a longer article on CurbingCorruption, linked here and as a pdf below, she proposes seven further measures to strengthen the profession.

The second contribution is the report of the Task Force on the role of lawyers established by the Secretariat of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Bar Association(IBA) in late 2016, in light of the controversies relating to the Panama and Paradise Papers, to review and consider the role of lawyers in detecting, identifying and preventing illegal conduct in commercial transactions, in particular transactions with an international character, where the risks of such conduct may be higher. Their joint report sets out key principles for lawyers working on commercial structures

It is available here on the IBA website and below.

If you’d like to contribute your experiences of strengthening the legal services sector and enabling it to better tackle corruption, do be in touch. Email us at editor@curbingcorruption.com


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