Toby\’s blog

You can read the complete story here at the HLS home page.

In an era where the financial world is rife with corporate scandal, the demand for attorneys who specialize in white-collar litigation is fast on the rise. Recently, the Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) hosted a panel of New York-based attorneys who are familiar with this new trend in corporate litigation through their work in investment banking, hedge funds, law firms, and the U.S. attorney’s office.

“The market for white-collar criminal defense is very new,” began Carey Dunne, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “Back when I started in the mid-1980s, very few firms had a white-collar criminal practice and there was no focus on the prosecution of corporations, mainly because the Justice Department didn’t see fit to do so.” This began to change in the mid-1990s in part because of the Uniform Sentencing Laws, which reshaped the view of corporations engaging in criminal behavior. “Thus, as these larger companies have run into such problems as compliance with SEC enforcement, the market for expertise in law firms has changed,” explained Dunne. All the panelists agreed that this new market is unlikely to change regardless of which transgressions are under scrutiny; the recent credit fallout is merely the latest crisis.

“Because of this new white collar focus, the regulating agencies have come into play in a huge way, and thus what it means to be in-house counsel has changed dramatically,” said Pierre Gentin, Managing Director and Head of Litigation at Credit Suisse Securities, LLC. Gentin cited four focal points that he felt banks should reexamine frequently: 1) evaluating the ability to manage the regulatory obligations of SEC agencies; 2) determining whether any litigations brought against the firm involve counterparties or new claims for civil litigation consequences; 3) approaching and dealing with the “ethical minefield” of non-compliant employees; and 4) analyzing the under-discussed impact of the media on company press. “As an in-house attorney, you must manage these risks simultaneously,” said Gentin.

Looks like lots of opportunities for HLS-trained attorneys…!

Tax Help is a student-run organization that helps local people in need file their tax returns. The organization’s president, Jesse Gurman, 2L, sat down with me to discuss the benefits both to students and to community.

Podcast: Jesse Gurman (5:53)