By Sara Kropf Our good friend Sarah Hall wrote an excellent article in the ABA’s Criminal Justice Magazine with Zachary Taylor about the investigation of allegations of abuse in women’s professional soccer conducted by Sally Yates for the U.S. Soccer Federation. The...
By Sara Kropf The Department of Justice repeatedly issues guidance to beg coerce encourage companies to self-report wrongdoing and, in effect, sell out their executives as the wrongdoers. As part of this “cooperation,” companies will conduct an internal investigation,...
By Dan Portnov Last week, the government moved one tiny step closer to being able to “outsource” its criminal investigations to non-DOJ actors. In a post-trial order, Southern District of New York Chief Judge Colleen McMahon excoriated the government for effectively...
By: Sara Kropf I recently participated on a panel at the excellent NACDL White Collar Defense College with Ellen Brotman, Preston Pugh, Brian Bieber and Cynthia Orr. The College aims to teach lawyers how to handle white-collar cases from start to finish. We were...
By: Sara Kropf Sometimes I'm asked whether this blog has led to clients. That's a hard question to answer. The simple answer is probably no. I don't write this blog for SEO purposes, and I don't write it for the person-on-the-street. Most of my readers are lawyers,...
By: Sara Kropf When I was a brand-new associate at a big firm, I volunteered to work on an internal investigation into accounting irregularities at a public company. I knew nothing about internal investigations. Before we started interviewing employees, a partner...
The Nationals are having a rough year--despite all those World Series predictions. Are you ready for some football? I have posted before about a defamation suit against the investigative firm that looked into the Penn State sex abuse scandal. The trend continues. The...
By: Sara Kropf Shell Oil and Shell International (collectively “Shell”) have been named in a defamation action by a former employee which relates to a criminal investigation. The employee claimed that Shell made defamatory statements in its report to the Department of...
By: Sara Kropf At the end of an internal investigation, outside counsel frequently prepares a written report. That written report may be for the Board of Directors only or it may be passed along to the Department of Justice. In the report, the company has every...