Compliance

A recent Washington state Supreme Court adopted a rarely affirmed position and held that attorney-client privilege does not extend to postemployment communications between former employees and counsel representing the former employer. This ruling would impact counsel responsible for conducting internal investigations and could restrict their ability to interview their clients’ former employees.

We’ve seen many corporate scandals this year, and time and again, misconduct is trickling down from the top of the org chart. Risks can come in many forms, but when the chief culprit is in the C-Suite, the organization can be in real trouble. Michael Volkov explains why Chief Compliance Officers should pay special attention to executives and the board.

In the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal related to the creation of millions of unauthorized accounts, government records revealed that former employees-turned-whistleblowers contacted the federal agency tasked with investigating whistleblower complaints as early as 2009, once again raising questions of how federal agencies can better protect whistleblowers.

How will Trump impact compliance? This download offers insights from top compliance professionals: Tom Fox, Michael Volkov, Jay Rosen, Jonathan Armstrong and Matt Kelly. From the "Everything Compliance" podcast.

Rule 502 offers novel and expansive protections for litigants in federal court, but when applied in the course of a federal investigation, its regulations concerning privilege waiver offer little peace of mind. Part 1 covered issues with the Rule, and today’s follow-up delves into protections against subject matter waiver and tips to employ the Rule effectively.

The fear of inadvertent waiver of attorney-client privilege or attorney work product in large-scale document productions has long kept defense counsel on edge. While amendments to the Federal Rules of Evidence have armed litigants with some novel (if underused) defenses against inadvertent privilege waiver, a party facing a government investigation, unfortunately, may not always enjoy such protections.

Many Americans are concerned about potential changes to trade and economic sanctions following Donald Trump’s election as President. Significant and strategic foreign investments must be cleared through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States – an important check to maintain national security and prevent foreign entities from gaining control over critical assets and infrastructure.

Recent SEC settlements should cause in-house counsel to assess their current separation agreements and company policies to ensure the documents do not impede whistleblower protections afforded to employees under U.S. federal law. Read on for more detail.

The new payment card data security standard went into effect November 1, 2016. Some of the changes may require significant effort to achieve and could result in companies being out of compliance for an extended period of time. Now is the time to review your control environment and begin filling any gaps.

We’ve all seen headlines about disastrous IT outages that cost companies millions. It’s easy to sit back and judge. How could they have possibly let that happen? Reality check: IT outages happen every day. It’s how you respond that counts. Learn from the mistakes other companies make far too often.

The corporate “gatekeepers,” attorneys and compliance officers, are often most likely to learn about illegalities, and they are also the most challenged as prospective whistleblowers. Few definitive rules exist, but due to legal, ethical or fiduciary constraints, they may be prohibited from informing authorities about wrongdoing.

Monitoring and auditing travel and expense reports is no walk in the park, particularly at large organizations. The experts at Oversight Systems, which examines trillions of dollars of expense transactions annually, has identified some trends and vulnerabilities. Oversight’s Nathanael L’Heureux addresses some of the most common vulnerabilities in T&E management.