Q: Dear Ethics Lawyer, I am an in-house corporate lawyer for a multinational agricultural products company. I was grinding away at 6 pm one evening when I received a call from a business colleague based internationally, with whom I have worked before. She explains that she is negotiating a license agreement to obtain rights to manufacture and sell some incredible new technology in the United States. She has an e-mail from the other party with the proposed form of licensing agreement. She tells me that the deal must be agreed upon in the next 12 hours or it will be lost to another bidder. Apparently she has been out of the office with an illness and had overlooked the email until just now. She wants me to review the proposed agreement immediately and advise her, but I’ve never done this before. She and I tried but were unable to reach an IP lawyer.

What do I do? I suppose my review is better than no legal review, but this is out of my area.