Become a Member . . . Mission . . . News . . . I refer in specific to the below-cited sections of two of the principles that are of greatest concern to ACCA members and their clients. ACCA fully supports the Department's objective of corporate compliance with federal, state and local laws and regulations.
Legal compliance is a critical aspect of the corporate counsel's job.
However, these statements suggest that corporations which wish to cooperate with government investigations and prosecution must abandon their attorney-client and work product privileges in order to do so. ACCA participated actively in the extensive process of drafting and commentary which created the Sentencing Guidelines. Requiring waiver of the attorney-client and work product privileges to prove cooperation was never an intention of the drafters of the Corporate Sentencing Guidelines. Indeed, the Sentencing Guidelines do not require, or even suggest, the disclosure of attorney-client information as a prerequisite or even an appropriate standard for judging the cooperation of a corporate defendant. The issue of waiver was discussed rather extensively, and was intentionally not included as one of the appropriate criteria or requirements for use by prosecutors operating under the Guidelines.