Partners Jessica Parker and Andrew Smith have written for Global Investigation Review’s Practitioner’s Guide to Global Investigations, on the representation of individuals in three types of interviews: interviews in corporate internal investigations, interviews of witnesses in law enforcement investigations, and interviews of suspects in law enforcement investigations.
“While the lawyer will always owe professional obligations to the client (i.e., the employee), the corporate may require the employee to agree to the lawyer acting on restricted terms. Such terms may define the scope of the lawyer’s work and outline circumstances in which the lawyer’s fees will not be paid or can be clawed back from the employee (e.g., if the employee becomes a whistle blower or is charged with a criminal offence). There may be other terms dictated by the corporate’s insurers. However, nothing in such terms can derogate from the lawyer’s professional ethical duty to act in the employee’s best interests,” they write.
Download the full article, as part of the guide, here.