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March 2008

Ian Roffman, a member of the firm’s Securities and Government Investigations and White Collar Defense practice groups, published “Zealous advocacy can mean playing nice with the SEC” in the March issue of New England In-House. A former senior trial counsel for the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Ian discusses eight mistakes he saw companies and their lawyers make in the spirit of zealous advocacy and offers advice avoiding them. These mistakes included ignoring or minimizing staff concerns, withholding information, failing to self-report misconduct, making contradictory statements, delaying the production of documents and witnesses, failing to stop known misconduct, overly coaching witnesses, and being argumentative or difficult to deal with. The article points out that many SEC investigations are closed each year without any enforcement action.