Justice William Strong Lecture on Ethics and the Business Lawyer

A light reception will immediately follow the lecture.

This in-person program will offer 1 PA CLE credit in ethics.

For CLE questions or additional information, please contact [email protected].

Robert G. Pickel will present “The Importance of Ethics in Regulatory Enforcement: Adversarial, Inquisitorial or Something Else.”

Government agencies routinely rely on enforcement proceedings to ensure compliance with their regulations. While many aspects of regulatory enforcement resemble judicial proceedings, important differences can shape the roles attorneys play and the ethical obligations they face.

Pickel will examine regulatory enforcement through the lens of two traditional models of judicial process: the adversarial model, prevalent in common law systems, and the inquisitorial model, more commonly associated with civil law systems.

In the United States, regulatory enforcement is often approached from an adversarial perspective. But is that the best way to understand the process? Does regulatory enforcement have more in common with an inquisitorial system, or does it fall somewhere between the two?

The lecture will explore those questions and consider what the answers may mean for attorneys representing both regulators and regulated entities, including the ethical considerations that can arise during an enforcement action.

About Robert G. Pickel

Robert G. Pickel is a longtime leader in the derivatives and financial markets industry whose career has spanned private practice, corporate law, international financial regulation and dispute resolution.

Pickel served as chair of the Management Board of the P.R.I.M.E. Finance Foundation from 2019 until May 2026 after joining the board in 2017. In 2016, he was the Lord Woolf P.R.I.M.E. Finance Fellow at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar, the Netherlands.

He previously served as chief executive officer of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association Inc., or ISDA, until 2014. During nearly 17 years with the organization, he spent more than a decade as CEO and also served as executive vice chairman and general counsel.

From 2015 to 2024, Pickel served as a nonexecutive director of Tradition SEF, a U.S. swap execution facility. From 2016 to 2024, he was a member of the board of Droit Financial Technologies LLC, a provider of compliance solutions for the derivatives industry.

Pickel currently consults on derivatives-related matters and has written about the 2008 financial crisis, derivatives regulation and the evolution of the swaps and derivatives industry.

Before joining ISDA, he was assistant general counsel in the legal department of Amerada Hess Corp., an international oil and gas company. He began his legal career as an associate with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York and London, where his work included representing ISDA.

Pickel graduated from Williams College and earned his law degree from New York University School of Law.