Example Of Duty Based Ethics

Catalent Pharma Solutions' Law Department Relies on Diversity as Competitive ...

Samrat "Sam" Khichi runs the legal department at Catalent Pharma Solutions on the theory that there is strength in collective experience.

Khichi, whose motto is "assume good intentions," says that, while this makes dialogue more productive, even the best intentions and goals won't make a diverse legal department work without a culture of "deep, mutual respect." It's not just sharing cannolis and potato latkes, although this helps, he says.

Three quarters of Catalent's 12 U.S.-based attorneys are women, as are 73 percent of its 15 attorneys worldwide and 72 percent of the senior legal leadership team. Forty percent are of minority background -- two black, one Asian-American, one South Asian and one "other."

Catalent's in-house counsel believe a diverse legal department, besides being the right thing to do, is a competitive advantage.

"We have to look at our customers -- how diverse they are," says associate general counsel Diane Duvall. "We have to think of where we work and the types of communities we work in. We are who we work with. It's who we want to be."

Khichi says the department was "fairly diverse" when he took over in October 2007. "We've just built on it in a meaningful, structured way," he says.

While many corporate counsel would agree that diversity brings tangible benefits, "we actually operationalize it," Khichi says.

Part of this regimen is that outside counsel are required to provide a demographics report on the gender, race and national origin of the firm as a whole, and to indicate the number of minority legal professionals assigned to work on Catalent business by role, e.g., partner, associate, paralegal.

Catalent's global marketplace is expanding, and the legal department has doubled in size since Khichi took over -- without increasing its budget. In fact, Khichi has reduced the cost of outside counsel while investing those dollars in more in-house attorneys.

The focus, says Khichi, is on building long-term value, which requires a great deal of flexibility. "We're extremely adaptive to the changing needs of the business, the regulatory environment and the life cycles of people in the department."

Khichi, who was counsel at O'Melveny & Myers in New York before coming to Catalent, previously worked at Shearman & Sterling and McDermott Will & Emery and before that spent almost seven years on active duty as an artillery officer in the U.S. Army and in the New Jersey National Guard on a counterdrug taskforce.

The Categorical Imperative

Kant’s Ethics and Metaphysics:

If there is one thing with which I have “struggled” the most in the realm of morality, it is the concept of moral duties. I tell you to look no further than the categorical imperative to send you to the deepest crevices of knowledge of moral behavior. These moral maxims are, by definition, “that which one is expected or required to do by moral or legal obligation.” You mean that I must abide by these moral duties? Obligation is an incredibly strong word. Literally, it implies that . To achieve a specific goal, as defined by the moral standard, you have no choice. Failure to abide by specific moral behavior results in a direct hindrance to your standard. With the only rational standard being your life , failure to behave morally literally costs you either quality or quantity of your life — or both. Now, that’s powerful stuff right there! As if the magnitude wasn’t great enough already, outside the law these codes of ethical conduct remain largely unwritten! C.S. Lewis, in his best-seller Mere Christianity , while most of us laymen simply call it ‘being good’ and ‘doing good things.’