Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates last week defended the changes the U.S. Department of Justice made to white-collar investigations last year in a speech that attempts to call the bluff of corporate law practitioners.
Yates slammed the criticisms levied by private-practice lawyers in the past year — including from her former Justice Department colleagues — of the memo that colloquially bears her name. She confronted the white-collar defense bar’s “dire predictions” and “cascading cavalcade of terribles” following the department’s release of a policy on how companies should root out individual wrongdoers when they are investigated for corporate breaches. (The policy is commonly called the “Yates Memo.”)
