By Sara Kropf Some of our clients who are under investigation by an Office of Inspector General (OIG) believe that the investigation is “political.” They are often convinced that they are under investigation because of their political views or because they were...
By Sara Kropf The Covid-19 pandemic changed how lawyers do our work. Depositions and meetings are conducted via Zoom instead of having everyone travel to one place. But one thing that (mostly) hasn’t changed is trial. Everyone physically gathers in a courtroom: the...
By Sara Kropf In late 2017, I represented a client who participated in a protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump in the District of Columbia on January 20, 2017. She was charged with conspiracy to engage in felony rioting, among other things, and faced the...
By Sara Kropf A few weeks ago, a California federal jury acquitted two former executives of the British software company Autonomy of conspiracy and wire fraud charges. It was a remarkable outcome, particularly since Autonomy’s CFO had been convicted of similar charges...
Note: A shorter version of this post was published by Bloomberg News on May 14. You can find the article here. By Sara Kropf I’ve written before about the Department of Justice’s questionable tactics in an FCPA case against two former executives for Cognizant...
By Sara Kropf Note: A similar version of this article was also published in Law360. When the Department of Justice indicts a defendant or prevails at trial, the Office of Public Affairs issues a press release. Those press releases tout the seriousness of the charged...
By Sara Kropf It has become a running joke among the defense lawyers I know that we can’t wait to see what the Department of Justice will announce as its newest “cooperation” policy at the annual ABA White Collar Crime conference. The ABA conference is the largest of...
By Sara Kropf Where the government indicts someone affects a host of key elements of a criminal case: How quickly the defense team will obtain key pretrial discovery; the composition of the jury pool; the speed of the trial; and likely outcomes for sentencing. In...
By Sara Kropf When 98% of federal criminal cases are resolved by plea agreements, you may expect that courts would fiercely protect defendants’ constitutional rights during the plea bargaining stage. Nothing could be further from reality. In fact, the Supreme Court...
By Sara Kropf When about 98% of federal criminal cases end with a plea bargain, the sentencing process plays a much larger role in a white-collar defense lawyers’ practice than most people realize. At sentencing, we try to focus the court on the client as a person and...