Choose your battles carefully. Credibility is key. And for god’s sake, don’t bore the board of directors. This was some of the plainspoken advice an all-star lineup of general counsel had for outside counsel on how to best represent companies in the investigatory hot seat.

Their remarks came Thursday at the American Bar Association’s white-collar crime conference in San Francisco, just hours after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a greater push to encourage people to report on companies by rewarding whistleblowing and incentivizing companies to disclose wrongdoing as early as possible.