White-Collar Crime Defense Strategies

Abstract

The article considers three specific strategies applied by white-collar crime attorneys can be identified. First, substance defense strategy is concerned with when and how an attorney decides to defend the client in a substantive way. Often, the substantive defense starts at a much earlier stage than in a street crime case. Second, information control strategy is concerned with what and how crucial information is controlled to make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the police and prosecution to get the complete picture. Often, information control defense is able to keep secrets and to claim that pieces of information are irrelevant. In police investigations, there are normally a number of information sources, often more than a dozen, as we shall see in this chapter. Controlling and limiting some source can cause the crime puzzle never to be solved in police investigations. Third, symbolic defense strategy addresses all other means that the attorney can apply to divert attention away from legal issues. An example is to portrait the offender as a victim in the press.