Fins Finance comments on the market's reaction to Lloyd Blankfein's decision to hire his own personal lawyer: "Don't be shy about lawyering up."
I agree, and assume that all reasonably informed people agree. I'm surprised that the market didn't assume that Blankfein's decision was a no-brainer. I made similar comments when President Obama complained that BP was getting "lawyered up."
In a similar vein, I just finished reading James Stewart's Tangled Webs, which recounted the perjury accusations agasint Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds, Scooter Libby, and Bernie Madoff. In an era where you can be convicted for allegedly misleading answers to federal investigators about conduct that wasn't even criminal to begin with, by all means, "don't be shy about lawyering up" if the feds want to talk to you.
(Micro-book-review about Tangled Webs for purposes of teaching PR: The chapters about Martha Stewart illustrate the pressure that bosses can bring to bear on lower level employees to lie, but because the lower level employee wasn't a lawyer, that issue will only be tangential to law practice. The discussion of the federal prosecutors' efforts to shore up -- and perhaps shape -- the employee's testimony were of some use to a PR class. The chapters on Scooter Libby were interesting for a class on the ethics/competence of criminal defense lawyers. The chapters on Bernie Madoff were interesting in terms of the limitations of relying upon even the best intentioned of federal agency lawyers for detecting fraud on the market. The Barry Bonds saga was interesting because the person who leaked the grand jury testimony was a defense lawyer. Stewart's concluding chapters, where he tried to make some larger points, were weak. The usefulness of the book is in the factual-journalistic chapters.)