Jeff Kaplan

Jeff Kaplan is a partner in the Princeton, New Jersey office of Kaplan & Walker LLP.   For twenty-five years he has specialized in assisting companies in developing, implementing and reviewing corporate compliance/ethics programs. This work has included conducting risk analyses; writing/editing codes of conduct and other policy documents; counseling companies in matters regarding training; developing compliance audit protocols and reporting systems; establishing compliance/ethics offices; and assisting boards of directors in meeting their fiduciary duties under the Caremark case. He has also conducted numerous program assessments. Mr. Kaplan’s compliance/ethics program practice has included work for clients in the health care, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, automotive, government contracting, insurance, manufacturing, energy, retail, paper, publishing, professional services, education, consulting, telecommunications, technology, securities, private investments, food and chemical fields, as well as non-profit organizations. 

Mr. Kaplan has, on two occasions, been an independent consultant for companies suspended by the World Bank, reporting to the Bank on their respective compliance programs, and performed a similar review for the United Nations; has served as a compliance monitor in a criminal tax case for the New York County District Attorney; has reviewed and reported to the Department of Justice and SEC on a company’s compliance/ethics program in connection with the settlement of an FCPA-related investigation; and has reviewed and reported to a state attorney general on another company’s compliance/ethics program in connection with a settlement of a fraud-related matter. He also conducts internal investigations on behalf of boards and companies into allegations of wrongdoing brought by whistleblowers and others. He received his B.A. (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Carleton College in 1976 and his J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard University in 1980. He is a former partner of Chadbourne & Parke, where he served in the Special Litigation Group, and also a former partner of Arkin Kaplan & Cohen LLP and of Stier Anderson, LLC.

For many years Mr. Kaplan was Counsel to the Ethics Officer Association (now the ECI), a professional association of more than 1000 compliance/ethics officers. He was also Program Director for the Conference Board’s annual Business Ethics conference and its Council on Corporate Compliance and co-authored two research reports for the Conference Board:   Ethics Programs – The Role of the Board: A Global Study and Ethics and Compliance Enforcement Decisions – the Information Gap (both with Ronald Berenbeim). In 2009, he was a recipient of a Compliance and Ethics Award from the Society for Corporate Compliance and Ethics, which that organization bestows annually on “Compliance and Ethics Champions.” 

Mr. Kaplan is, together with Joe Murphy, co-editor of Compliance Programs and the Corporate Sentencing Guidelines: Preventing Criminal and Civil Liability (West 1993), a leading legal treatise on designing and implementing compliance/ethics programs. He is co-author of The Prevention and Prosecution of Computer and High Technology Crime (Matthew Bender 1989) and author of an e-book on risk assessment issued by Corporate Compliance Insights. He was for many years co-publisher/executive editor of ethikos, a bimonthly magazine covering compliance/ethics best practices He is author and co-author of numerous articles about business crime and compliance/ethics programs in periodicals such as The California Management Review, The Journal of Securities and Commodities Regulation, The Prevention of Corporate Liability: Current Report, The Preventive Law Reporter, Corporate Board, Directorship, Director’s Monthly, American Banker, Business Crime Commentary, the New York Law Journal and the National Law Journal, and also various book chapters on these topics.

Mr. Kaplan is a co-chair of the Practising Law Institute’s annual Advanced Compliance and Ethics Workshop and for many years chaired the Continuing Legal Education program in corporate compliance sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He is editor of the Conflict of Interest Blog. He was for many years Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He is now a contributor to the Ethical Systems research project which is run by a professor at that school. He is a member of the New York and New Jersey bars.