Internal Investigations
The Firm is regularly engaged to conduct internal investigations on behalf of boards and board committees of business and non-profit entities and executive management. For example, since 2020, in separate matters, the Firm represented two audit committees, two board special committees, and a Fortune 100 public company, in each case to examine specific facts and circumstances that required immediate confidential review and analysis. These and similar matters arise in a wide variety of circumstances, such as in response to an internal allegation, a government investigation, or a third-party claim. We have also been engaged by non-profit boards to investigate allegations of misconduct and represented some of these clients before the New York Attorney General’s Charities Bureau and New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services. In each case, we work with our client to make case-by-case assessments of the appropriate scope of investigation, whether subject matter experts should be employed in aid of the inquiry, the degree to which the investigation should remain confidential and the form in which to memorialize our investigative work and results.
Some of the Firm’s internal investigative work is in support of a board committee’s decision whether to move to dismiss a derivative lawsuit, and in such matters, we advise our client in the preparation of court submissions. In other matters, it is contemplated from the outset that the client engagement, in furtherance of the client’s cooperation with investigating authorities, may entail presentation to a government body of the client’s investigation and conclusions.