do you really believe that? compliance under scrutiny, more like it
But sure, ethically speaking when things get heated they will exploit every loophole they can find to avoid liability. So, lawful evil?
That sounds like a terrible job.
You can see a similar phenomenon with security professionals. True, the only secure computer is one disconnected from the Internet, turned off, put in a Faraday cage, on the moon, under armed guard - but that's not useful.
Get rid of the guard. They might turn the computer on.
The overwhelming goal of a company's legal department is "don't get sued", followed by "if sued, lose as little money/leverage as possible".
In general the lawyer in the room is going to be far more risk-averse than the engineers, product people, sales people, or marketers.
The trick is that outside of some limited circumstances the legal department at companies are not the final say. Many lawyers who "go in house" (i.e., quit a private outside firm and go work directly for a company) find this frustrating. They come into a room, say "don't do that", and then a few weeks/months/years later someone did it and now they have to prepare for a lawsuit.