ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the societal purposes of the legal function and how it relates to the purposes for which businesses operate and individuals live their lives. It also describes where legal compliance and ethics are located in the organizational structure of the firm and what activities are needed to carry them out. The chapter discusses how legal compliance and ethics activities fit within the Aristotelian epistemic architecture. It explores how corporate legal practitioners fulfill MacIntyre's requirements for the virtues in three steps: showing how practices affirm and promote virtue, demonstrating how practices fit within the context of individual lives and roles, and arguing that virtuous lives enable the development of the legal profession and community. The chapter discusses how legal compliance and ethics practices could be exercised in accordance with the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). It illustrates the concrete virtues demanded in the legal compliance and ethics functions through three mini-case studies.
