Legal knowledge is a powerful tool for generating organizational value, but like any other valuable asset, it is vulnerable to misuse. First, the chapter highlights the extant literature on ethics and the strategic use of legal knowledge. Second, it identifies an innovative but underutilized UN regime which articulates a promising suite of values-based legal principles in support of ethical practice. Third, the chapter highlights the potential of a literature known as proactive law that can help reimagine how scholars and firms view legal knowledge in human terms. Finally, the chapter identifies how the culture of an organization can be a powerful force in support of values-driven applications of legal knowledge. The chapter concludes that, while there is much potential to develop ethical practices in the utilization of legal knowledge, much work needs to be done in order to better understand the ethical implications of legal knowledge and to mature ideal principles and practices into reality.

This chapter addresses how the pathways of legal strategy can be applied in practice. The first part of this chapter presents three case studies that show how firms can respond to common legal challenges. The mandate to stop sexual harassment, the protection of intellectual property rights, and the prohibitions related to anti-corruption are all used as examples of how each pathway can be applied with varying levels of effectiveness. The second part of the chapter explores how a firm can elevate its implementation of legal knowledge from one pathway to another. This part shows how companies can evolve their legal practices from avoidance to conformance, conformance to prevention, prevention to value, and value to transformation. Although not every legal issue is transformative, understanding how the pathways work in practice can help firms deploy their legal knowledge as effectively as possible.