Prerequisite: None

Exam Type Last Class Take-Home

The past several years have seen a number of significant developments in white collar criminal prosecutions. Over the last decade, the government has demanded massive financial settlements in white collar prosecutions, including several in which federal prosecutors have sought indictments of corporate entities and demanded guilty pleas as part of the resolution. Recent pronouncements by the Department of Justice suggesting a softening of this approach for companies that self-disclose and cooperate. Prosecutors have also indicated their intention going forward to increase their focus on individual prosecutions, leveraging internal investigations conducted by corporations and insisting that corporations must provide evidence of individual wrongdoing in order to get cooperation credit. There have also been significant developments in numerous areas of white collar law, including insider trading, public corruption, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to name a few. And investigations that were once limited to the United States now frequently involve regulators and prosecutors across the globe.

This course will examine those developments and will focus on (1) case studies in corporate criminal law enforcement, including how federal law, emerging prosecutorial practices, and corporate cooperation guide and shape the resolution of white collar investigations; (2) evolving government expectations about the role of corporations and corporate counsel; (3) ethical and legal dilemmas in conducting a corporate investigation; (4) the emergence of the deferred prosecution agreement and efforts to regulate it; (5) the black-letter law of corporate criminal liability, including the challenges posed by this standard for companies in light of the collateral consequences of indictment; (6) recent developments in insider trading, the FCPA, and public corruption, among other areas; and (7) the impact on US prosecutions of foreign regulators investigating cross-border conduct. The course will also address various law enforcement investigative techniques commonly used by prosecutors and issues pertaining to sentencing in white collar cases.

Note: This course will meet over six weeks from January 27, 2022 to April 1, 2022.