Navigating the Business Law Curriculum: Internal Corporate & Government Investigations

The Richmond Law & Business Forum will run several posts through the month of October on next semester’s course offerings related to business law.  In this post, we asked Adjunct Professor Patrick Hanes to discuss his course on Internal Corporate & Government Investigations.

This two-hour course presents a case study of a corporation’s response to allegations that employees’ conduct may have violated federal law.  Through the use of the case study, the class follows the stages and consequences of a company’s internal investigation.  Each student participates in the exercise from the point-of-view of a particular legal role – corporate general counsel, counsel to members of senior management and directors of the Board, outside investigating counsel, and key government regulators.

The “Roundtable” format for the class sessions was partly inspired by the old “Fred Friendly” series of programs on PBS.  That reference is probably before your time.  But it might be worth your time researching this series on the internet (see, e.g., http://www.fredfriendly.org/), and perhaps even taking a quick look at one of the programs that may be available on Youtube or other services.  The general idea is that a moderator leads a group through the development of a hypothetical, with each member of the group answering and asking questions from the point of view of a participant in the scenario. 

Once we begin the case study, you are given some facts about the unfolding case so you can start to analyze the facts and topics we will need to confront in the next class.  New facts are then developed and provided in class, to set up the next legal challenges and choices of the participants.  Readings are also assigned to provide the practice and advocacy framework for each stage of the scenario.  In addition to the regular class sessions, the instructor meets with each student individually a number of times during the semester to discuss the student’s assigned role in the case study and to provide guidance for the final memoranda.  At the end of the course, each student will prepare a written memorandum or other piece of work product reflecting the assigned perspective.  There are also a couple of shorter writing and presentation assignments as we develop the scenario.  Your grade will be determined roughly 50% on class attendance and participation and 50% on the final memoranda. 

Patrick Hanes is a practicing attorney, employed by a private firm since 1995 following a one-year federal district court clerkship.  When he started to practice, he tried dozens of criminal cases representing individuals including as a court-appointed counsel for indigent criminal defendants.  Eventually, he combined his interest in criminal law with the skills he developed in corporate civil litigation into a practice conducting internal investigations and defending companies and their employees in criminal investigations, including antitrust, securities law, tax matters, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.  He presently serves as co-chair of the White Collar and Investigations Practice Group at the law firm of Williams Mullen, and is co-chair of the International White Collar Committee of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section.  A work he co-edited entitled “An International Guide for Corporate Internal Investigations,” is scheduled to be published by the ABA later his year.