Not directing this at you, but to all - this is a concrete example of why you shouldn’t blindly trust legal (or medical, or spiritual) advice. Ask questions, make sure you understand, and think critically. No one is infallible.
https://a16z.com/2014/02/06/why-i-did-not-go-to-jail/
TL;DR, A widely respected CFO makes a suggestion regarding stock and being competitive as far as employee compensation. CFO says that they have done the same thing at numerous companies. The CEO is not very knowledgeable and asks the general council (who unlike a lot of places at the time reports directly to the CEO, not the CFO) to weigh in. General council says don't do it, so they don't. 2 years later, CFO goes to jail, CEO and everyone else stays out of jail because of a good decision.
I would extend your lesson and say to be sure you are asking a lawyer who has knowledge / experience in the area of law you're asking about.
However, it sounds a bit like backdating stock options type thing, and a fair amount of people went to jail over that across various industries.
I DO think there is something that should set off someone's spidy sense that "Wait, we're changing the dates on these options that already exist?" or "We're lying about the dates / price these options were really granted at?".
To me at least that raises a lot of questions just changing the date on something financal to say it happened in the past like magic. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be very nervous about that.
There are some laws explicitly written to say that ignorance of the law is an excuse. "knowing an willing violation" (I don't know if this is one of them though)
Taking that to the logical extreme of having a legal opinion with every email puts you in a very privileged situation with the state
It exponentially increases the cost of the state to investigate. The state now knows you have a lawyer already, but doesn't know the contents of the advice and doesn't get to use things under attorney-client privilege even if a judge approved a fishing expedition that exposed your digital artifacts. And in the meantime it lowers your compliance burden if the advice says you don't have to comply, depending on how you compensate your lawyer your costs were super low.
If there is potentially criminal liability, but the burden of proof is a knowing and willful violation, then you're practically exempt because of the lawyer on payroll.
So in this case they negotiated the fine and get to improve operations.
Costs of investigating and prosecuting aside, the state likes to see a rationale for compliance. The lawyer also provides that, which you would prefer to have some case law to support it. This doesn't result in sanctioning the lawyer, its just not worth it to the state.
And usually lawyers are personally liable, so there is no “going out of business” unless they go personally bankrupt.
Dunno how true all of the above is in CA.
Get your own lawyer’s advice :)
The question isn’t whether it’s moral or ethical. It’s what the risk exposure? What are the likely outcomes? Do we have our bases covered?
Fire them! (Or, we can’t, it overexposes us, create a new department, assign them and then dissolve the department some time later and declare them redundant).
Stating that a thing is or is not legal is making a claim about the opinion other humans in positions of authority (whose specific identity is unknown) will have on a similar question in the future.
There is always subjectivity in it, since you are literally predicting someone else's subjective opinion. The objectivity of law is a conceit, not a reality.
But the legal system is so complex, how are you as a laymen suppose to verify it if you are basically the test case for trying something new?