A corporate lawyer is a lawyer who specializes in corporations law.
As of 2004, there were 67,000 corporate lawyers in the United States, working on average for 50 hours per week, with a mean starting salary of USD164,000, rising to USD193,700 after 5 years and USD239,000 after 10–15 years.
The role of a corporate lawyer is to ensure the legality of commercial transactions, advising corporations on their legal rights and duties, including the duties and responsibilities of corporate officers. In order to do this, they must have knowledge of aspects of contract law, tax law, accounting, securities law, bankruptcy, intellectual property rights, licensing, zoning laws, and the laws specific to the business of the corporations that they work for.
The practice of corporate law is less adversarial than that of trial law. Lawyers for both sides of a commercial transaction are less opponents than facilitators. One lawyer (quoted by Bernstein) characterizes them as "the handmaidens of the deal". Transactions take place amongst peers. There are rarely wronged parties, underdogs, or inequities in the financial means of the participants. Corporate lawyers structure those transactions, draft documents, review agreements, negotiate deals, and attend meetings. In this job the average pay ranges from $50,000-90,000. Increases throughout your working years.
What areas of corporate law a corporate lawyer experiences depend from where the firm that he/she works for is, geographically, and how large it is. A small-town corporate lawyer in a small firm may deal in many short-term jobs such as drafting wills, divorce settlements, and real estate transactions, whereas a corporate lawyer in a large city firm may spend many months devoted to negotiating a single business transaction. Similarly, different firms may organize their subdivisions in different ways. Not all will include mergers and acquisitions under the umbrella of a corporate law division, for example.
Some corporate lawyers become partners in their firms. Others become in-house counsel for corporations. Others still migrate into other professions such as investment banking and teaching law.
Some publications read by those in the profession include Global Legal Studies, Lawyers Weekly, and the National Law Journal.
Famous quotes containing the words corporate and/or lawyer:
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)
“When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)