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violate the law for money and corporations as" . . . the difference being a "gang member" regardless of how financially successful his criminal enterprise is, is unlikely to have the financial wherewithall to insulate himself from legal accountability should he be caught. Corporations on the other hand do it as a matter of business and are rarely, with a few notable sacrificial lambs who take down entire segments of an industry, held accountable. And corporate lawyers willingly string out litigation indefinitely to save the entity money (time value) rather than counsel them to accept the legal consequences of their actions once proved.
Yeah they are both bad actors, and yeah it is probably a matter of perspective which attorney is the engaging in the more noble pursuit, and yeah it's also a matter of the scale of potential or actual harm inflicted. For myself I have very little empathy for corporate attorneys or their clients. It was a very bad legal precedent to for all intents and purposes insulate corporate actors from personal civil and criminal accountability. As I'm sure you know it isn't very hard for lawyers to insulate with a few degrees of separation any executive from personal accountability. Yet most corporate attorneys know full well the culpability of their entity client and its directors, officers, or managers, and that not one of the former will likely ever be held accountable for the very human consequences of their profit driven decision making. But they are more than willing to interpose themselves to prevent justice from being done so long as billables are high and the checks keep getting signed.
The ethical issues are not quite the same between individuals and entities despite law schools all over America trying to brainwash people into believing they are. A street criminal languishes in jail until what little process he is afforded expires. The corporate criminal and their lawyers join our political criminals on the cocktail weenie and bullshit circuit at 7:00pm every day. Same can't be said of the public defender.
