Counsel for companies, boards, and executives facing internal and government investigations, covering fact-finding, privilege, and defense in matters before the SEC, CFTC, DOJ, and IRS, with the enterprise's reputation kept in view.
A grand jury subpoena says little; the prosecutor's cover letter says almost everything. The Justice Manual distinguishes a witness, a subject whose conduct falls within the investigation's scope, and a target against whom the government already holds substantial evidence, and the word the prosecutor uses on the first call decides how the company prepares its people.
Two statutes do more damage here than the conduct under review. Lying to a federal agent in a voluntary interview is a five-year felony with no warning required. Destroying a record in contemplation of a federal investigation carries twenty years, so the hold issues and auto-delete goes off before anyone is interviewed. The company has no Fifth Amendment privilege; its officers do, and the day their interests diverge is the day they need their own counsel.
We act for companies, boards and individuals in internal investigations and before the SEC, the CFTC and the Department of Justice, and before the IRS where the exposure is tax. The investigation runs under privilege, with Upjohn warnings given and recorded, because the privilege belongs to the company, which alone should decide what to do with it.
Independent, privileged internal investigations for boards and audit committees that establish the facts of a whistleblower report, audit finding, or compliance failure, so the company can decide on disclosure, remediation, and discipline from knowledge.
Representation in matters before the SEC, the CFTC, the DOJ, and the IRS. We manage subpoenas, document requests, witness interviews, and Wells submissions, and we coordinate the agency relationship alongside any parallel proceeding.
Defense in matters involving alleged fraud, securities and disclosure issues, accounting irregularities, and market conduct, with the documentary record and the relevant standards marshaled into a coherent, defensible account.
Disciplined response to subpoenas and document demands, from legal hold and preservation through scoping and review, privilege logging, and production protocols that satisfy the request without surrendering more than the law requires.
Counsel for directors and officers caught up in an inquiry, with advice on conflicts, indemnification, and joint-defense arrangements, and coordination with separate or specialist counsel where individual and company interests diverge.
Post-matter compliance program review, remediation plans, and monitorship support, so the lessons of an investigation become controls that reduce the chance the same exposure recurs.
Destroying a record in contemplation of a federal investigation is a twenty-year felony, and the statute does not wait for a subpoena. The hold issues the day an inquiry is reasonably anticipated, and auto-delete is suspended on every messaging app and personal device used for business, which the Department expects a policy to have covered.
The privilege belongs to the company, so each employee is told that counsel acts for the company, which may waive, and that the conversation is confidential only on the company's side. A written report given to the outside auditor loses attorney-client privilege in most courts, though work-product protection may survive, so findings are often oral.
Cooperation credit under the Justice Manual is earned only by disclosing all relevant facts about the individuals involved, executives included, and the Department will not demand a privilege waiver. Self-disclosure, full cooperation and timely remediation can earn a declination under the Corporate Enforcement Policy. They cannot keep those facts from the plaintiffs who follow.
An officer named in a target letter needs separate counsel that day. Fees are usually advanced under the bylaws against an undertaking to repay, with Side A insurance behind when the company cannot pay, and a joint-defense agreement lets both sets of counsel share work without waiving privilege until the interests part.
Courts need not stay a civil suit while a criminal investigation runs beside it. A civil deposition answer is an admission in the criminal case, an executive who takes the Fifth in the civil suit faces an adverse inference, and the company cannot take it at all. Each filing is cleared against both dockets.
The federal limitations period is five years by default, but securities fraud runs six, offenses affecting a financial institution run ten, and the government can suspend the clock up to three years while it seeks evidence abroad. A conspiracy's last overt act restarts the count, so the exposure window is computed first.
Within hours of the subpoena or whistleblower report, legal holds issue, the engagement is structured to hold privilege, and a single channel to the government is established. Who is told what, and in what order, is decided before anyone improvises.
A privileged internal investigation runs ahead of the government's: document review, Upjohn-warned interviews, and a controlled written record that gives the board a true account before a regulator hands it one.
Productions are scoped and negotiated, witnesses prepared, and the cooperation posture chosen deliberately. In an SEC matter the stage culminates in the Wells submission that argues charges should never be filed.
The matter ends in declination, settlement, deferred prosecution, or defense on the merits, with individual exposure, parallel civil suits, and insurance resolved in the same frame, and remediation planned so the same exposure does not recur.
The government will learn the facts eventually. The only question is whether you learn them first.
It is the representation of a company or an individual when the government suspects a financial crime, and it begins with a piece of paper: a grand jury subpoena from a United States Attorney's Office, a formal order and subpoena from the SEC, or a civil investigative demand. The work has three parts that run at once. An internal investigation under privilege establishes the facts before the government does. The government-facing work manages productions, witness preparation and the cooperation posture, including the Wells submission in an SEC matter. And the defense of individuals, who may be witnesses, subjects or targets in the Justice Manual's vocabulary, runs alongside with separate counsel where their interests part from the company's.
When the information is credible, and before anyone outside the company has heard it. For a listed company the audit committee is required by Sarbanes-Oxley to have a procedure for receiving complaints about accounting and controls, and its lawyers are required to report evidence of a material violation up the ladder, so the trigger is often procedural rather than discretionary. Timing has a price attached: under the Department of Justice's enforcement policy, a company that learns of misconduct from an internal whistleblower keeps its eligibility for voluntary-disclosure credit only if it reports within 120 days, even where the whistleblower has already gone to the government. The investigation that starts that week is scoped to answer the disclosure question by then.
Yes. We represent clients in matters before the SEC, the CFTC, the DOJ, and the IRS; we do not speak for the agencies, only for the companies and individuals in front of them. We map regulatory and criminal exposure early and manage the agency relationship, from subpoenas and document productions to Wells submissions and meetings, alongside any parallel civil or internal proceeding.
Cooperation is a transaction with published terms. Under the Justice Manual the credit is earned by timely disclosure of all relevant facts, including about individuals, and the Department will not condition it on a privilege waiver. Under the Corporate Enforcement Policy, a voluntary self-disclosure plus full cooperation plus timely remediation can produce a declination, and the Sentencing Guidelines cut a corporation's culpability score for self-reporting and cooperation if the matter ever reaches sentencing. The costs sit on the other side of the ledger: the facts disclosed are not privileged, they reach the parallel civil plaintiffs, and they are often facts about the company's own officers. We lay both columns out before the first proffer, and we coordinate with locally admitted counsel where a foreign regulator is also at the table.
Privilege has to be built into an investigation from the first day. We structure the engagement and the witness interviews to preserve the attorney-client privilege and work-product protection where they apply, give Upjohn warnings, control the written record, and manage who sees what, so the company keeps real choices about what to share and when rather than waiving protection by accident.
They get a letter, or they should ask for one. The Justice Manual labels a person a witness, a subject whose conduct is within the investigation's scope, or a target the prosecutor already regards as a putative defendant, and the label decides whether the executive can be interviewed by company counsel at all. A subject or target needs separate counsel, with fees usually advanced under the bylaws against an undertaking to repay and Side A insurance behind that. A joint-defense agreement lets company and individual counsel share work without waiving privilege while interests are aligned. The company, meanwhile, owes the Department all relevant facts about the individual if it wants cooperation credit, which is the conflict the whole arrangement is built to manage.
Defense of companies in DOJ civil-fraud investigations and whistleblower-driven qui tam actions, from first subpoena through resolution.
Explore →Anti-corruption compliance programs, third-party due diligence, internal investigations, and defense of cross-border bribery exposure.
Explore →Trial advocacy for complex business disputes and commercial conflicts, the civil proceedings that so often run in parallel with a government inquiry.
Explore →Representation in futures and commodities disputes over unauthorized trading, account losses, and broker and trading conduct, including matters before the CFTC.
Explore →Protection and enforcement of intellectual property, trade secrets, and proprietary information through litigation and dispute resolution.
Explore →Arbitration, mediation, and other alternative dispute resolution to resolve conflicts efficiently while preserving valuable business relationships.
Explore →Reviewed by Jonathan D. Herpy, Sr., Senior Partner · Last updated October 2026 · Educational overview · Not legal advice
One partner is accountable for the whole matter, and you have that partner's direct line. Chicago, London, and Dubai work to the same standard.