A corporate attorney is a person who works for a corporate or corporate house or firm and specializes in corporate law. Corporate law is the study of how shareholders, directors, employees, creditors and other stakeholders such as consumers, society and the environment interact with one another. Company law involves studying the Companies Act 2013, etc. Thus, company law is part of a broader corporate law.
It is the duty of corporate attorneys to understand laws and regulations to help companies and their clients operate within the bounds of the law. The role of the attorney is to ensure the legality of business practices and transactions. Other duties of company attorneys include ensuring the continuity of commercial transactions, advising companies on their legal rights and obligations, including the duties and responsibilities of employers and other officers. To carry out effective compliance, they must have knowledge of aspects of contract law, securities law, intellectual property rights, tax law, accounting law, bankruptcy law, licensing, and laws specific to the business of the company for which they work. . He must maintain confidentiality between the company and the company’s clients. This is because if a company’s clients are not guaranteed confidentiality, they are less likely to seek legal advice.
Corporate attorney jobs include drafting laws, reviewing agreements, negotiating agreements, and attending meetings with company clients. He handles the company’s internal legal work with little to no litigation work. However, he must assist the company’s external lawyers in legal matters. Even though they work for a large company, they may also be self-employed and contracting themselves out to many different companies. Generally, they serve only one client, namely the company they work for. As a corporate lawyer, he is called on to handle a wide range of legal assignments including corporate taxes, mergers and acquisitions, corporate structure issues, employment law, and a variety of other legal issues. They generally must have knowledge in various areas of law and must be able to deal with a wide range of matters. Some companies hire multiple attorneys depending on the job and requirements and each of them is a specialist in one or two areas of company law. So, small companies retain one or two attorneys while large firms may have more than one or two attorneys, each with their own specialty. Generally, companies such as banks, insurance companies, retail companies, hospitals, oil companies and biotechnology companies, manufacturing companies, energy and communications companies require full-time corporate lawyers.
To become a company attorney it is important that he or she must have a specialist course on corporate law and this can be done by earning an LLM degree after completing the LLB course. LLM corporate law courses will generally cover work in company and securities law, contracts and commercial law, intellectual property rights, banking law, international trade law and other fields.
Manoj Tomer