About Carole Basri

Carole Basri is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and NYU School of Law, where she was a member of its National Moot Court Team. She was an assistant counsel on the United States Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee, and was an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). She was in-house counsel at the advertising agency of NW Ayer, Inc. She left to become an associate at Baker & McKenzie and later at Hall, Dickler, Lawler, Kent and Friedman. Ms. Basri was in house counsel at Maidenform, Inc. She was a consultant to the Perrier Group, Inc. and from 1994 to 2002; she was a consultant to Deloitte & Touche LLP and helped to create the Ethics and Compliance practice. From 1999 to March 2001, she was General Counsel to China On Line, Inc. For ten years, she served as co-chair of the Practicing Law Institute’s (PLI) Conferences on Corporate Compliance and on Advanced Corporate Compliance. She has been Chair of the Ethics for In-House Counsel seminar since 2004 and Chair of the Global Financial Crisis conference since July 2008.

Ms. Basri is an adjunct professor of Corporate Law and the Grant Irey Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has been an adjunct professor at New York Law School and Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School. She was a visiting professor at Hebrew University Law School in March 2008 and will be teaching, as a Senior Fulbright Scholar, at Tsinghua Law School in Beijing in Spring 2010.

In addition, she has been Executive Director of the Greater NY Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) for over 10 years until September 2006. She is the President of the Corporate Lawyering Association which is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing outstanding educational opportunities including high caliber conferences of interest to the corporate counsel community and internships for law students in in-house law departments. She also currently serves as a member of the Executive committee and co-chair of the Corporate Compliance Committee of the International Law and Practice Section of the New York State Bar Association; a member of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI) Corporate General Counsel Advisory Committee; a member of the International Council of the International Section of the American Bar Association; and on the International Council of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Ms. Basri, President of the Corporate Lawyering Group LLC which advises on corporate compliance programs, has created comprehensive compliance and ethics programs for major corporations including The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, Cendant, Benjamin Moore & Co. and Dannon Inc. These programs were all launched within nine months and in many cases in multiple languages and locations. She is also providing advice on law department management, document retention and corporate governance issues. Also since the first Corporate Lawyering Accreditation Conference in 1999, the Corporate Lawyering Group LLC has developed conferences and programs on corporate and international law as well as on ethics. She is also on the Academic Committee of the INTERPOL Anti-Corruption Academy from June 2007 until present where she is working on creating a curriculum for addressing corporate corruption.
Ms. Basri is co-author of Corporate Legal Departments (3rd edition) published by the PLI which will be translated in the Fall of 2009 by China Press into Chinese and the editor of International Corporate Practice published by PLI. She is the co-editor of eDiscovery for Corporate Counsel for West Publishing. Ms Basri is editor of Corporate Compliance Practice Guide: The Next Generation of Compliance which is expected to be published by Lexis Nexis in October 2009. She is also the editor of a PLI Handbook on the Global Financial Crisis published in August 2009. She further received the 2001 Lexis Nexis/ Corporate Legal Times Leadership Award. She was the keynote moderator at the LegalTech West Coast Conference in June 2009 in Los Angeles, CA.

In 2003, Ms. Basri was a member of the US State Department’s Future of Iraq Project. From July 2003 until July 2004, she was a member for the Coalition Provisional Authority working with the Iraqi Reconstruction Development Council (IRDC) for Ambassador Bremer in Baghdad. She worked extensively on doing business and anti-corruption and transparency issues in Iraq. She helped draft legislation on these issues and met with all of the Ministries in Iraq. She created the “Doing Business Conference in Iraq” at the Union League in New York on December 9, 2003 and in September 2004; she led a conference in Baghdad on transparency and anti-corruption in Iraq and worked as an advisor on these issues with the Iraqi Ministry of Health. In September 2004, she worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the Iraqi Red Crescent on health and legal issues. In September 2005 she was asked by Iraqi Prime Minister Jaafari to represent the Iraqi government in finding law firms and accounting firms to represent the Iraqi government in bringing Oil for Food litigation and she was instrumental in obtaining the Oil for Food documents from the Iraqi Board of Supreme Auditors for the UN Commission on Oil for Food headed by Paul Volcker.

In March 2005, Ms. Basri spoke at Cairo University School of Law on anti-corruption to a conference for Chief Judges and Appellate Judges from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt on anti-corruption Protocols. Similarly, in April 2005, she spoke on anti-corruption strategies at the Dead Sea in Jordan at a conference for 150 Iraqi women leaders sponsored by the Defense of Democracy and the U.S. State Department. In July 2005, she spoke at the Iraqi Constitutional Convention in Southfield, Michigan, with a direct hook-up to Iraq, on constitutional issues. In October 2005, she met with Iraqi women leaders at the United States State Department to discuss leadership issues in the December 15, 2005 election. In March 2006, Ms. Basri worked in Baghdad with the Woman’s Alliance for Iraq Democracy and the Global Justice Center on gender crimes training for the Iraqi Tribunal Judges on Saddam Hussein’s case and in November 2006, at the Dead Sea in Jordan, in a four day conference, she continued this gender training for Iraqi tribunal judges on gender crimes. Ultimately, this work was used by the judges in the Anfal case. In January 2008, Ms. Basri spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School on Iraqi women’s issues and anti-corruption protocols. In July 2009, she delivered 10 lectures on women’s rights, anti-corruption and leadership at the Iraq Studies Institute in Beirut, Lebanon. On January 31, and February 1, 2008 created and chaired International Corporate Practice Conference at the Penn Club in New York City. On March 31, 2008, Ms. Basri was the moderator for a PLI teleconference on the Global Financial Crisis and on July 7, 2008 she chaired a PLI conference on the Global Financial Crisis. On September 19, 2008 Ms. Basri moderated a session at the NY State Bar Association International Fall Meeting in Stockholm, Sweden on the Global Financial Crisis and on September 25, 2008 she moderated a session on the Global Financial Crisis and eDiscovery at the ABA International Fall Meeting in Brussels, Belgium. In November 2008 she spoke at a conference sponsored by the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation in Berlin, Germany on International Law and the Middle East. On April 17, 2009, Ms. Basri will be moderating and speaking on the Global Financial Crisis at the ABA Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Basri is also a documentary film producer and her films have been shown at film festivals and PBS. Recently, she produced a documentary on hemophiliacs in Iraq who got AIDS through tainted blood parts for the Iraqi Red Crescent. She has advised, on a pro bono basis, a preparatory PBS production of Saddam’s trial. Finally, she has been a commentator on the Iraqi elections and constitution for MSNBC, CNN, FOX and Al Iraqiya TV.