Federal prosecutors aren’t the only ones putting the squeeze on corporate defendants, it turns out. Like the U.S. Department of Justice, New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has also pressured companies to stop paying the legal fees of employees who face criminal charges. Spitzer appears to be the only state AG who has raised fee payment as an issue.
A handful of defense attorneys with clients indicted by Spitzer knew that he had demanded fee cutoffs. But the AG’s tactics came as a surprise to several white-collar crime experts and leaders of the bar, including officials at the Association of Corporate Counsel, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Bar Association.
