white collar/investigations exit options? Forum

[Anonymous User]

When it comes to talking about a depo in an interview with a prospective employer, the space between the partner who did the depo and the associate who reviewed all the docs and wrote the depo outline is not that great. In fact, the associate who prepared the depo will probably be able to discuss it even better than the partner who did the depo. (Different story if we're talking about quality of performance within a depo itself.)

Fair enough, it was just an example. I still believe that for most substantive stuff, it’s harder to talk convincingly about something you haven’t done. Maybe the better analogy is someone who hasn’t been involved with a depo at all.

[Anonymous User]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

[Anonymous User]

White collar is pretty bad for exit opps, though probably not much worse than lit as a whole. Government is doable, especially if you get real litigation experience through pro bono, but being an AUSA honestly isn’t a great gig *unless* you love the work. (People who love the work are very happy.) In house opportunities are mostly at very large companies, especially banks, where they have in house investigative lawyers to review HR complaints and simile that aren’t important enough to hire outside counsel for. I would think lateraling to a smaller firm is not that easy if you don’t have good lit experience on top of the investigations work, but not sure.

That said, it is a fairly interesting practice area while you’re actually at the firm and tends to be very profitable as compared to other lit areas, so you can stick around for a while if you’re decent and can stomach it.

My impression from summering at a small but "elite"/market white-collar boutique that primarily reps private companies and high-net-worth individuals was that they highly valued trial experience but didn't value investigations experience. They'd probably take a good FPD over an investigations senior associate at a top firm. YMMV, but seems to align with the remarks on here re: substantive experience.

[Wanderingdrock]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

[Anonymous User]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really wish I had known about investigations work as a junior associate -- seems like it'd be more interesting/less stressful than a pure litigation role.

[Wanderingdrock]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really wish I had known about investigations work as a junior associate -- seems like it'd be more interesting/less stressful than a pure litigation role.

Probably less stressful, yeah. We certainly have fire drills from time to time and most of us don't JUST do investigations; we also do due diligence or advise on issues for corporate deals and have to run on the corporate teams' schedules some of the time, etc. But we tend to have fewer real deadlines (few if any court filings, more just "the partner would like to present to the client or produce documents to DOJ by X date") and, while we'll sometimes write formal memoranda or get involved kind of peripherally in litigation (or do real courtroom litigation for pro bono matters or through some other group that we work with), our work product tends to consist more of PowerPoints and lots of emails with P&C headers.

There's something to be said for the relative consistency of the schedule; except for the fire drills, you can usually plan out the work you have to do days in advance as a junior or even mid-level. (Seniors dance to the partners' fiddles and therefore have less ability to reliably plan.) But when you're doing investigations that can last months or years, and those bleed into more investigations because the client likes your team's work and they find out they don't just have issues in X market but also Y and Z... It can get tedious. Some of the most interesting investigations work I've done - other than the pre-Covid travel - has been law school-esque memoranda on legal issues that come up on occasion, leading me to wonder if I'm not missing out by not being a real litigator. I guess what I'm saying is, investigations can be a good area to work in, but it pays to also have something else you do.

[Anonymous User]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really wish I had known about investigations work as a junior associate -- seems like it'd be more interesting/less stressful than a pure litigation role.

Probably less stressful, yeah. We certainly have fire drills from time to time and most of us don't JUST do investigations; we also do due diligence or advise on issues for corporate deals and have to run on the corporate teams' schedules some of the time, etc. But we tend to have fewer real deadlines (few if any court filings, more just "the partner would like to present to the client or produce documents to DOJ by X date") and, while we'll sometimes write formal memoranda or get involved kind of peripherally in litigation (or do real courtroom litigation for pro bono matters or through some other group that we work with), our work product tends to consist more of PowerPoints and lots of emails with P&C headers.

There's something to be said for the relative consistency of the schedule; except for the fire drills, you can usually plan out the work you have to do days in advance as a junior or even mid-level. (Seniors dance to the partners' fiddles and therefore have less ability to reliably plan.) But when you're doing investigations that can last months or years, and those bleed into more investigations because the client likes your team's work and they find out they don't just have issues in X market but also Y and Z... It can get tedious. Some of the most interesting investigations work I've done - other than the pre-Covid travel - has been law school-esque memoranda on legal issues that come up on occasion, leading me to wonder if I'm not missing out by not being a real litigator. I guess what I'm saying is, investigations can be a good area to work in, but it pays to also have something else you do.

Thanks for such a candid response.

I'm curious regarding exit options: are you planning on staying in BL or will you be looking at gov't/in-house work down the line? In-house definitely has investigations roles though they're not as prevalent as corporate roles (obviously) but more or less in line with the number of pure lit in-house roles (meaning not a ton).

[Wanderingdrock]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really wish I had known about investigations work as a junior associate -- seems like it'd be more interesting/less stressful than a pure litigation role.

Probably less stressful, yeah. We certainly have fire drills from time to time and most of us don't JUST do investigations; we also do due diligence or advise on issues for corporate deals and have to run on the corporate teams' schedules some of the time, etc. But we tend to have fewer real deadlines (few if any court filings, more just "the partner would like to present to the client or produce documents to DOJ by X date") and, while we'll sometimes write formal memoranda or get involved kind of peripherally in litigation (or do real courtroom litigation for pro bono matters or through some other group that we work with), our work product tends to consist more of PowerPoints and lots of emails with P&C headers.

There's something to be said for the relative consistency of the schedule; except for the fire drills, you can usually plan out the work you have to do days in advance as a junior or even mid-level. (Seniors dance to the partners' fiddles and therefore have less ability to reliably plan.) But when you're doing investigations that can last months or years, and those bleed into more investigations because the client likes your team's work and they find out they don't just have issues in X market but also Y and Z... It can get tedious. Some of the most interesting investigations work I've done - other than the pre-Covid travel - has been law school-esque memoranda on legal issues that come up on occasion, leading me to wonder if I'm not missing out by not being a real litigator. I guess what I'm saying is, investigations can be a good area to work in, but it pays to also have something else you do.

Thanks for such a candid response.

I'm curious regarding exit options: are you planning on staying in BL or will you be looking at gov't/in-house work down the line? In-house definitely has investigations roles though they're not as prevalent as corporate roles (obviously) but more or less in line with the number of pure lit in-house roles (meaning not a ton).

I've considered government and in-house. Right now, though, I think I'm in a good spot and am enjoying my work. I've not seen anything out there yet with the right balance of compensation, lifestyle, and engaging subject matter to pull me away from this insanely well-compensated job where I'm doing 2000-2200 billables per year. As long as my firm continues to do right by me and I continue to get the kind of support from partners I've had so far, I intend to see where this goes. You're right that the exit options for pure investigations kind of suck, but there are good regulatory in-house jobs for which we're usually qualified, and once you're financially secure there's plenty of government jobs where you don't need courtroom experience to make a difference.

[Anonymous User]

For those of you that do investigations work (internal, FCPA, etc), what are your major responsibilities as a (i) junior, (ii) mid-level, and (iii) senior associate?

(i) Junior: Reviewing documents, selecting and summarizing key documents, preparing interview outlines, and taking notes for witness interviews/being on-site for device collections; you might also conduct interviews for less-key witnesses or assist with client or DOJ/SEC presentations.
(ii) Mid-level: Supervising document reviews, preparing and supervising preparation of outlines, conducting witness interviews, supervising document productions, and preparing client presentations/summaries.
(iii) Senior: Preparing and giving client or DOJ/SEC presentations/summaries, conducting witness interviews, coordinating with local counsel - pretty much anything above doc review and up to what the partner does, depending on how much they trust you. A lot of it is shielding the juniors and mids from the partner's eccentricities and revising the juniors'/mids' work to match your experience of what the partner wants, to minimize the questions you get back after the work product goes to the partner.

This is fantastic! Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really wish I had known about investigations work as a junior associate -- seems like it'd be more interesting/less stressful than a pure litigation role.

Probably less stressful, yeah. We certainly have fire drills from time to time and most of us don't JUST do investigations; we also do due diligence or advise on issues for corporate deals and have to run on the corporate teams' schedules some of the time, etc. But we tend to have fewer real deadlines (few if any court filings, more just "the partner would like to present to the client or produce documents to DOJ by X date") and, while we'll sometimes write formal memoranda or get involved kind of peripherally in litigation (or do real courtroom litigation for pro bono matters or through some other group that we work with), our work product tends to consist more of PowerPoints and lots of emails with P&C headers.

There's something to be said for the relative consistency of the schedule; except for the fire drills, you can usually plan out the work you have to do days in advance as a junior or even mid-level. (Seniors dance to the partners' fiddles and therefore have less ability to reliably plan.) But when you're doing investigations that can last months or years, and those bleed into more investigations because the client likes your team's work and they find out they don't just have issues in X market but also Y and Z... It can get tedious. Some of the most interesting investigations work I've done - other than the pre-Covid travel - has been law school-esque memoranda on legal issues that come up on occasion, leading me to wonder if I'm not missing out by not being a real litigator. I guess what I'm saying is, investigations can be a good area to work in, but it pays to also have something else you do.

Thanks for such a candid response.

I'm curious regarding exit options: are you planning on staying in BL or will you be looking at gov't/in-house work down the line? In-house definitely has investigations roles though they're not as prevalent as corporate roles (obviously) but more or less in line with the number of pure lit in-house roles (meaning not a ton).

This is my experience as well - I'm a senior in this group. Re exit options, they do sort of suck. You can try and get a compliance role in-house (which a lot of my colleagues have done), but that shifts incredibly fast to lots of HR-type investigations and only the most senior roles get to interact or direct outside counsel on the more interesting investigations. Also, you have to shift to very business-minded type of compliance, i.e., helping get the company comply with the FCPA, sanctions, AML, etc. rules so that it can do business in X country or in Y industry. I also find that "going to government" sounds good in theory but is rarely appealing in practice and the pay cut for fed work is really big (I would not do it). And federal positions are not exactly easy to get.

Re skills, you should make sure and seek out opportunities or roles where you can get real lit experience. It is not unheard of to be a senior in white collar and not have ever taken a depo or written a non-pro bono brief. That may limit your options if you want to go to a smaller lit shop or state/local government that expects you to be able to handle these aspects of litigation easily given your seniority. Re white collar defense, it is much harder at most firms to get the opportunity to represent individuals or companies in white collar trials or litigation. They exist, of course, but they are rare and super-hard to come by - not to mention that everyone in the group will want to do it. You'll generally be doing lots and lots of internal investigations or investigations that arise from an SEC/DOJ/other gov. agency request or investigation. Be careful that you don't stagnate; one issue to look out for is that once you're a mid-level in investigations you've sort of seen what they all look like (small, large, medium) and what's required.

Also the person that wrote re the travel downsides - that is credited. No investigations travel is ever fun. You're in another country and in a nice hotel and you cannot leave or see the sights or do anything worthwhile. At best, you get to go to a fancy restaurant with your coworkers (yay?). At worst, you don't see outside for the entirety of your stay while you do interview after interview after interview. I do find that associates will brag about the travel for some reason, but I think it's a way to make ourselves feel better. It's been a blessing to be able to do these via zoom, sadly.