In today’s business climate we cannot seem to go a few weeks without the next big company fraud that has been foisted upon the public. The current scandal du jour is Volkswagen and tomorrow it will be who knows. At some point however, either as a result of a whistleblower or anonymous tip, a corporation will conduct an internal investigation to (1) uncover the facts surrounding the current problem and (2) advise management, including the board of directors, of the potential liability and suggest a course of action. It is a “best practice” that when conducting an internal investigation, that a company retain an outside law firm specifically for the investigation to show that the directors of the company are zealously discharging their fiduciary duties to investigate suspected wrongdoing. While these outside attorneys will undoubtedly have access to all company documents and emails, including servers, a large part of the investigation will center upon these attorneys and their interviews with company employees.
If you find yourself in the situation where you are about to be interviewed in connection with a company investigation you need to ask yourself two questions. Do I need a lawyer? Who pays? If you truly played no role in what the company is investigating you don’t need a lawyer. However, if you are a key insider who has information that will shed important details on what transpired you certainly would want to retain your own lawyer. There are many reasons why and I will address them below.
First, consider that earlier this year the Department of Justice set forth a Memorandum that identified that it would go after the individuals responsible for corporate wrongdoing and work its way inward towards the corporate hub. In addition, Justice conditioned any corporate cooperation credit that a corporation could hope to receive would be conditioned upon the disclosure of all corporate wrongdoings and all of the individuals that performed them. Think about this for a second. If the company you are working for is the subject of an investigation and wants in effect what is leniency in its “corporate sentence,” it must turn you over to Justice.