Prosecutors’ Rush to Join Private Law Firms Accelerates

The wave of financial fraud prosecutors joining private law firms is continuing – in fact, it appears to be accelerating.

Consider that, in just the past couple of days,

• David Meister, who ran the enforcement unit at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, joined Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom as a partner, where he will lead the white collar defense practice group in the firm’s New York office; and
• Charles Duross, the lead Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, joined Morrison & Foerster’s office in Washington, D.C., where he will lead the firm’s global anti-corruption practice.

There simply is no practice group of more interest to more law firms than what we at the Financial Fraud Law Report and the Financial Fraud Law Blog refer to as “financial fraud law.” Some firms characterize it as “white collar criminal defense” or “anti-corruption,” but all that it encompasses – from securities fraud, insider trading, money laundering, bank fraud, wire fraud, the False Claims Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, government investigations, the impact of Dodd-Frank, and more – is a growth area for law firms and their clients.

Indeed, financial fraud law today is more than knowing what to do when accused of trouble; it also is knowing what to do to avoid trouble in the first place. As Thomas J. Perrelli, chair of Jenner & Block’s Government Controversies and Public Policy Litigation Practice, observed yesterday when the firm announced that Timothy A. Karpoff, former director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Institutions Policy, joined the firm as a partner in its Washington, D.C., office, “There is a large – and growing – demand for regulatory advice.”

Contact the author at smeyerow@optonline.net. 

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