Many of the administration’s enforcement priorities may raise serious concerns for criminal defense lawyers and other champions of legal rights. White-collar practitioners, however, might be able to conjure up some gratitude for the new regime at the Justice Department when they find themselves advocating for fairer treatment of their corporate clients.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has commented about shifting enforcement resources toward more traditional, non-white-collar cases and, when addressing white-collar enforcement, he has spoken of an increasing focus on individual rather than corporate liability. Indeed, the country’s top law enforcement officer has opined that corporations should not necessarily be penalized by criminal prosecution for the wrongful behavior of a few isolated employees.