Prerequisite: None

Exam Type Last Class Take-Home

The past several years have seen a number of significant developments in white collar criminal prosecutions. The Department of Justice recently announced a renewed focus on white collar criminal enforcement, allocating additional resources to investigating and prosecuting corporate crime and holding individuals engaged in corporate misconduct accountable. White collar criminal prosecutions present difficult ethical issues for prosecutors and defense attorneys, and there have been significant developments numerous areas of white collar covered by this course, 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 government’s use of corporate resolutions to enhance compliance measures at companies; (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, public corruption, and cybercrime, 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.