Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 204: Listen and Learn -- Scope of Discovery and the Work-Product Privilege
Internal Investigations in the Asia-Pacific Region
Cyberside Chats: Preserving Legal Privilege After a Cybersecurity Incident
Jones Day Presents: Strategies for Dealing with the IRS: The IRS Examination
Day 15 of One Month to Better Investigations and Reporting-the Parameters of Privileges
This one-hour Ethics CLE program will cover the challenges to attorney-client privilege that may arise during a corporate crisis, including tips to communicate with attorneys and outside consultants, invoking the common...more
One thing leaders of organizations routinely recognize is that “you never know what tomorrow will bring.” Another common slogan is “life happens.” If “life” happens to bring the organization a situation that could expose the...more
A whistleblower has triggered a race against time: An internal inquiry, directed by the audit committee and overseen by external counsel, has been launched in response to allegations that revenue was recorded without proper...more
I. THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE - Historically, the attorney-client privilege developed upon two assumptions: (1) good legal assistance requires full disclosure of a client’s legal problems; and (2) a client will only ...more
Suppose your company suspects an employee broke the law, perhaps even using company property to do so. The company decides to conduct an internal investigation. If your company is sued because of the employee’s conduct,...more
When a company discovers that a crime may have been committed by individuals within the company, or is alerted by the government of that possibility, the company will often hire an outside law firm to conduct an internal...more
Cognizant Technology’s Privilege Waiver - On February 1, 2022, the District of New Jersey ordered a company to produce internal investigation materials to two former executives indicted in connection with an alleged foreign...more
To foster open and honest communications with counsel, it is critically important that those communications are protected from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege. But, not every communication with counsel is...more
In Attorney General v. Facebook, Inc., No. SJC-12496 (March 24, 2021),[i] the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clarified the scope of protection afforded by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine to...more
Whether you are a director, or a member of an in-house legal, human resources, or internal audit team, there are sensitive scenarios that occur daily in companies and charitable organizations across industries that trigger...more
A ruling issued by the North Carolina Business Court last month could have a significant impact on the ability of North Carolina companies and counsel to assert the attorney-client privilege over communications exchanged in...more
The answer, maybe, but it depends on the facts in each case. Merely because a company has its outside legal counsel directly retain a third party service provider for an incident response, i.e., digital forensics, does not...more
Benjamin Franklin once said, “The handshake of the host affects the taste of the roast.” He was right: a simple handshake introduction can be telling, not least of all in the context of internal investigations. Most obvious,...more
While much of the corporate legal world has been focused on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a little-noticed case working its way through the federal courts in Washington, D.C. threatens to whittle down the scope of...more
As California begins preparing to ease shelter-in-place restrictions, the state’s technology industry is facing the most challenging economic circumstances in recent memory. The state’s technology companies may place new...more
On May 1, 2020, the D.C. Circuit denied RPM International’s petition for a writ of mandamus to vacate a district court order compelling disclosure of interview memoranda prepared by outside counsel to the Securities and...more
A mandamus petition is an extraordinary remedy that seeks to compel a lower court to take action in extraordinary cases. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has twice granted mandamus petitions vacating...more
Last week's Privilege Point described a court's finding that the work product doctrine protected a corporation's investigation of a gender and age discrimination claim -- because the investigation was neither "routine nor...more
Understanding the boundaries of legal privilege in corporate internal investigations is critical. When counsel, either internal or external, misunderstands these boundaries, the result can be disastrous....more
A company’s general counsel learns that an executive assistant has made an internal report of sexual harassment against the CEO. Given the allegations and people involved, the GC personally investigates the report and...more
In our last alert, we discussed three tips to ensure an effective internal investigation: (1) develop and follow internal policies; (2) identify the audience that will evaluate and make decisions at the outset of the...more
Imagine an anonymous worker at a multinational’s Egypt factory contacts the global whistleblower hotline and accuses the Cairo plant manager of dumping chemicals into the Nile. Or imagine the manager of a bank’s Mexico City...more
There has been much attention — and rightfully so — on the impact of the #MeToo movement within the workplace. That impact has significantly changed employment policies and practices from large national corporations to small...more
Boards of Directors and management at companies of all sizes face a common problem: they need to make decisions that are best for the company and in order to do so they need to know the facts — the pleasant and the unpleasant...more
In Lassiter v. Hidalgo Medical Services, No. 17-00850 (D. N.M. Apr. 18, 2018), a former employee sought to compel production of outside counsel’s reports and findings of an internal investigation into harassment claims. The...more