Russ Berland

Russ is a member of the firm's Corporate Finance Division and co-chair of both the Governance, Risk & Compliance Group and the Whistleblower & Investigation Response Team. He has extensive experience in building practical and effective legal compliance programs for businesses and in conducting investigations if things go wrong. He has received national recognition for his innovative methods, which have established best practices in compliance. His practice focuses on compliance and legal risk management.

Russ was vice president and chief compliance officer at BearingPoint, a multinational consulting firm. While there, Russ built practical and effective global compliance programs covering BearingPoint's 17,000 consultants in more than 60 countries. Russ also has built global compliance programs for Hewlett Packard.

Russ is experienced in building multinational programs to comply with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other nations’ anti-bribery laws under the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials.

Russ takes a practical approach to helping businesses assess and meet their compliance and legal risk management needs. Having hands-on experience in building programs in house, he understands the nuts and bolts of compliance risk assessments, program design, program build out, compliance process integration, training, communications, monitoring and effectiveness review. Russ has spent considerable time with senior executives and boards in reporting, discussing and obtaining buy-in on compliance issues.

Education

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Articles

Presentations

Russ is a frequent speaker on a number of issues related to legal risk management and compliance. He has spoken at the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association annual meeting, the Society for Compliance & Corporate Ethics annual meeting, the Corporate Compliance Center and state bar continuing legal education events. His topics have included effective training and communications; internal investigations; assessing the effectiveness of compliance programs; and ethics issues under the Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys acting as compliance officers.

• "When an Attorney Both Represents a Company and is Its Compliance Officer," March 3, 2010, Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP Business Law Update, Kansas City, Mo.
  
  
• “How to Keep Your CEO Out of Jail: The Why’s and How’s of Corporate Compliance,” February 17, 2010, Mid-America Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, Kansas City, Mo.