Practice Areas & Industries: Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Baker Donelson maintains a multi-disciplinary Practice Group to assist clients in navigating the complex and wide-ranging issues of corporate compliance. With more than 60 years of cumulative corporate compliance experience within the Group, Baker Donelson draws upon lessons learned from a wide range of business environments involving not only "internal compliance" for companies subject to regulatory requirements, but also "external compliance" for (i) non-regulated vendors providing products and/or services to regulated companies, or (ii) regulated companies that are providing products and/or services to customers outside of their own regulatory environment.

We provide practical advice even as the statutory and regulatory approaches to the responsibility and liability of our clients are changing. Our goal is to assist clients in understanding and charting a course through today's legal landscape in order to best achieve their goals. Our experience and knowledge enable us to survey a client's current practices, measure them against historical and newly-imposed requirements and best practices across industries and jurisdictions, identify required changes, recommend optional changes, assist in implementing those changes, and if necessary defend against corporate or personal liability. We assist our corporate clients in complying with new standards of information-gathering and reporting, including contract compliance plans, internal disclosure controls and inquiries from customers in the ordinary course of business, as well as inquiries from oversight agencies during investigations.

One of our key strengths lies in our experience across the spectrum of compliance environments, from SOX, GLB and HIPAA to OFAC, PATRIOT Act and EU schemas with regulated entities and the vendors that sell into regulated industries. We understand the regulatory and the business drivers on both sides of compliance-related requirements, and can use this knowledge to achieve the most favorable result for the client. This breadth of experience allows us to avoid unnecessary roadblocks and to fashion creative compliance solutions within the specific operating environment of the client.

Services Available

Representative Matters

• We closely monitor and keep our clients updated on important changes in both internal and external corporate compliance, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the related SEC rules and PCAOB Audit standards; The Financial Modernization Act of 1999 (also known as the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" or "GLB"); the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA); the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act); and other U.S., EU and international regulatory environments and technology standards such as SAS, ISO, and NIST used to address such environments.
• Currently serve as outside Compliance Counsel and advise compliance officers and corporate boards.
• Currently serve as Counsel to the Ethics Officers Association.
• Represented technology vendors supplying equipment and services to financial services companies subject to GLB (from responding to RFPs that incorporate specific GLB compliance provisions through final documentation of contract responsibilities for compliance).
• Represented financial services companies in solicitation of goods and services from non-regulated vendors (from due diligence of vendor compliance to integration of roll-up transactions subject to audit and OFAC compliance). Represented health care providers, insurers, business associates and third party administrators subject to HIPAA.
• Designed a privacy and security compliance plan for a 170,000 member not-for-profit organization whose membership is in every state of the United States as well as in Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Bermuda.