Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%

Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.

Looking Before You Leap in International Investigations

By Laurence A. Urgenson, Matthew J. Alexander and Jamie A. Schafer
March 25, 2014

International investigations are now commonplace for many white-collar criminal defense lawyers and, very often, following the facts means putting “boots on the ground” in a number of exotic and far-flung locales. In many (if not most) cases, these investigations will implicate foreign data privacy regimes, both entrenched and emerging.'

Historically, the risk of enforcement under these laws has proven to be largely theoretical. Consequently, data privacy has often been dismissed as a dry topic of legal discourse, with little impact for practitioners. Recent developments call this perception into question, particularly as U.S. regulators have more aggressively demanded that companies produce documents protected by data privacy regimes. A stark example of this is the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC or Commission) recent action against the Chinese subsidiaries of the “Big Four” accounting firms, for their refusal to produce documents ' including audit work papers pertaining to U.S.-listed Chinese companies ' because production would violate China's state secrets regulations.

Read These Next
The DOJ's Corporate Enforcement Policy: One Year Later Image

The DOJ's Criminal Division issued three declinations since the issuance of the revised CEP a year ago. Review of these cases gives insight into DOJ's implementation of the new policy in practice.

The DOJ's New Parameters for Evaluating Corporate Compliance Programs Image

The parameters set forth in the DOJ's memorandum have implications not only for the government's evaluation of compliance programs in the context of criminal charging decisions, but also for how defense counsel structure their conference-room advocacy seeking declinations or lesser sanctions in both criminal and civil investigations.

Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar Investigations Image

This article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.

Bankruptcy Sales: Finding a Diamond In the Rough Image

There is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.

A Lawyer's System for Active Reading Image

Active reading comprises many daily tasks lawyers engage in, including highlighting, annotating, note taking, comparing and searching texts. It demands more than flipping or turning pages.