Cor­por­ate Crime lawyers

If your business faces allegations of illegality or other wrongdoing, whether from whistle-blowers, regulators or other authorities, you will need to act quickly to investigate and protect your corporate reputation. You will need to know how to respond to the issue in the minutes and hours after it has arisen, both internally and externally, in order to protect the business and avoid exacerbating the problem. You will also need to know how to investigate the issues, while protecting the integrity and confidentiality of the process and maximising the protection of legal privilege where available.

We work with clients of all sizes in the UK and beyond, from household names to SMEs, to resolve these difficult issues wherever in the world they occur. This may include conducting confidential internal investigations and responding to investigations by prosecutors and regulators, such as the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and environmental agencies in the UK and many others worldwide.

If there is a risk of criminal liability, we will help you protect your legitimate interests throughout the process, including on issues such as legal privilege, data protection and transfer, metadata preservation and employment issues. We help clients by managing the matter, including managing, where appropriate, other service providers such as forensic accountants, private investigators and foreign law specialists.

Through CMS Evidence, we have our own in-house data collection and hosting capability to enable fast data gathering, processing and review, and allow significant time and cost savings compared to third party providers.

We understand how stressful and time-critical these matters are, with individuals facing the prospect of losing their livelihoods or even their liberty, and we are available 24 hours a day to support you when required.