Part 1: So You Want to Be a Compliance Professional? Advice for Law Students

Picture this: A Fortune 500 company discovers that its star salesperson has been making “facilitation payments” to foreign officials for years. Upon a closer look, these payments turn out to be illegal bribes under U.S. law. The company’s General Counsel turns to the Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer and asks, “How did we miss this?” This scenario illustrates why the legal profession needs more lawyers who understand not just how to respond to problems, but how to prevent them.

Yet legal education has a blind spot when it comes to preparing students for careers in compliance. While law schools have many courses on litigation and transactional practice, few schools offer exposure to the preventive discipline of compliance. This gap leaves most students unaware of a career path that combines legal expertise, business skills, and ethical leadership.

This article—the first in a three-part series—starts to bridge that gap by providing guidance to law students interested in compliance careers. The next article will examine how law schools can better promote and prepare students for careers in compliance. And the last installment will explore how the compliance profession can help promote the field to law students and recent law school graduates. But first, I will address the law student wondering whether compliance might be their calling.

Understand the Compliance Mindset

A good place to start is this: compliance professionals work diligently to cultivate an organization that empowers and motivates people to do the right thing. Your litigation-focused classmates are training to be legal firefighters, rushing in after a fire has started. Compliance professionals are the architects who design a safer building, and this proactive mindset shapes how they approach their work. They think in terms of systems, controls, and organizational culture that reduce legal and ethical risks so that an organization is more effective at serving its mission. When you internalize this perspective, you’ll find yourself asking different questions: not “how do we defend this action?” but “how do we design processes that make us better at what we do?”

Prepare to Be Part of the Business team

Compliance professionals do not operate in isolation—they navigate complex corporate environments daily. You will need to understand how boards of directors function, how executives make decisions, and how different departments interact (and sometimes clash). To be effective, you will need to influence decision-making across multiple organizational levels. In some companies, the general counsel might be your supervisor, but you’ll need to work effectively with everyone from the board’s audit committee to human resources to front-line sales managers. Your ability to read these dynamics and work within them separates effective compliance officers from those who write policies that gather dust on shelves.

So, to add value to the organization, knowing the law isn’t enough. If you can’t speak the language of business, you’ll struggle to influence decision-makers. You must understand how the organization makes money. Learn what metrics drive executive compensation. Master the ability to frame compliance objectives in terms that resonate with business leaders. When you can demonstrate how strong compliance drives sustainable profitability—rather than simply imposing costs—you’ll find doors opening that would otherwise remain closed. The most successful compliance officers are those who position themselves as business partners, not police officers.

Choose Your Law School Courses Strategically

When choosing courses, consider classes that cover the knowledge and skills needed to serve the roles described above. I find it helpful to divide courses into three buckets.

The first bucket includes foundational courses that will be useful in any compliance setting:

• Corporations or Business Associations provides the basic rules about the structure, governance, and liability of the types of organizations in which compliance professionals work.
• Employment Law covers the rules that apply to the employer-employee relationship, and that generate significant compliance challenges across all industries.
• Administrative Law will help you understand the myriad forms of regulation in which your organization is enmeshed. For example, what is a “Dear Colleague Letter,” and does it have legal effect? What about an Executive Order?
• White Collar Crime or Federal Criminal Law survey the main federal criminal risks and the issues that arise when prosecuting and resolving federal criminal investigations.
• Negotiations, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Conflict Engagement courses will develop skills needed to navigate the many relationships and conflicts that arise within any organization.
• International Law and related courses may be useful because the compliance field is global in reach, and legal and ethical risks do not stop at the United States borders. Consequently, the compliance field offers unlimited international potential.

The second bucket is courses that address the legal environment for organizations that operate in specific industries. I have some students that come to law school from specific business backgrounds, like healthcare or finance. These students know which industry they will return to, and they take courses that cover the risks specific to their industry. Students that do not have that focus might consider courses in typically high-risk areas:

• Securities Regulation shapes the disclosure obligations and insider trading programs at publicly traded companies.
• Health Law covers the legal framework for one of the most heavily regulated sectors of the economy. Related courses might also cover Food and Drug Law and more specific aspects of the regulation of healthcare.
• Banking Law sets the ground rules for businesses in the investment, advising, and financial services industries.

The more versatile your substantive knowledge, the more valuable you’ll be to potential employers.

The third bucket is compliance specific courses, like a general elective that provides an overview of corporate compliance and ethics programs. Not many law schools have such a course, so you may need to inquire about taking a class as a visiting student at another law school. For example, I teach an asynchronous online class entitled Corporate Compliance and Ethics Programs that students can take from anywhere. A visiting student who took that course might be able to transfer the credit back to their home law school.

Develop Other Knowledge and Skill Sets

In addition to legal knowledge, you should think about other topics and skills that would be valuable in a compliance role. Since these are non-legal, you may need to look to other schools on campus for relevant courses, such as a business school. Or, you might look for online courses through Coursera or another vendor. Here are some subjects to consider:

• Internal Investigations. When misconduct allegations surface—and they will—you’ll need to investigate. This requires skills that traditional law school courses rarely teach. You must learn to conduct interviews that elicit truth without creating defensive reactions. You need to manage sensitive investigations without causing organizational panic. You must document findings in ways that satisfy both internal stakeholders and potential regulatory scrutiny.
• Organizational Culture. You can draft the most elegant policies imaginable, but if organizational culture doesn’t support them, they’re worthless. Peter Drucker famously observed that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”—the same principle applies to compliance. Study how leadership tone, performance incentives, and organizational dynamics either reinforce or undermine compliance efforts. Understanding human behavior and organizational psychology proves just as important as understanding regulations. The best compliance programs align with how people actually behave, not how we wish they would behave.
• Data and Technology. Modern compliance is increasingly data-driven. Compliance professionals who thrive in the future will be those who can leverage technology effectively. Get comfortable with data analytics platforms. Understand how artificial intelligence can enhance transaction monitoring. Learn how machine learning can identify patterns of potential misconduct. Technology isn’t replacing compliance professionals—it’s amplifying their ability to identify and address risks in real time.
• Difficult Conversations. As a compliance professional, you’ll often deliver unwelcome news to powerful people. Can you tell a CEO that their pet project has serious legal problems? Can you write a memorandum that clearly explains complex risks without drowning readers in legalese? Can you facilitate a board discussion about potential criminal liability while maintaining productive relationships? Develop your ability to communicate with clarity, confidence, and diplomacy. Your effectiveness depends as much on how you deliver your message as on the substance of what you say.
• Public Speaking. Compliance professionals must regularly present complex regulatory requirements, policy updates, and training materials to diverse audiences ranging from frontline employees to C-suite executives, making clear and persuasive communication essential for successful program implementation. Additionally, as the “voice” of ethics within an organization, their credibility and influence directly impact their ability to foster a culture of integrity, and strong speaking skills can help command respect, build trust, and effectively convey the importance of the compliance and ethics program.

Externships

Maybe you are wondering whether compliance might be your passion, but you don’t know what the work is like. Or maybe you know, but you would like to get compliance experience on your resume. In either case, you should consider a law school externship in a compliance role. All ABA accredited law schools allow students to receive academic credit for externships where students perform legal work under the supervision of an attorney. You can work with your law school’s externship coordinator to identify a compliance department at a local organization that is willing to host an extern.

Another option is to look within your university for a possible externship opportunity. For example, most universities have personnel who work on compliance related to athletics, research, and Title IX, among other risks. And if your university is affiliated with a hospital or other healthcare provider, it will have a healthcare compliance office. In my experience, these university offices welcome inquiries from law students interested in assisting their work.

Start Building Your Network

Don’t wait until graduation to build relationships in the compliance community. Reach out to your law school’s alumni working in compliance roles. Your law school’s career services and alumni relations departments can help connect you with alumni in the field. Attend conferences hosted by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics or the American Bar Association (many offer student rates). Many large and mid-size cities have compliance and ethics professionals associations that would welcome interest from local law students. Connect with professionals on LinkedIn. In my experience, the compliance community is remarkably welcoming to newcomers. These relationships won’t just help you find employment—they’ll provide real-world insights that complement your legal studies.  The free weekly newsletter, Compliance and Ethics:  Ideas & Answers https://ideasandanswers.com, is also a good source of insights about the compliance and ethics field. 

Conclusion

The compliance profession stands at a critical juncture. Regulatory complexity continues to increase. Stakeholder expectations for corporate behavior continue to rise. Technology creates new risks even as it offers new solutions. If these challanges resonate with you—if you’re excited by the opportunity to shape how organizations operate in an increasingly complex world—then compliance might be your calling.