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.
