Overview
Ropes & Gray’s investigations group is built around a concentration of former federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney’s offices with the investigative experience and know-how to conduct thorough and sensitive inquiries. Our deep prosecutorial background in gathering evidence enables us to navigate complex investigations with efficiency and tact.
Drawing on multidisciplinary resources (such as subject matter experts in the areas of employment law, securities regulation, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and import and export controls) and decades of experience, we are able to address the full range of considerations surrounding investigations. Our approach includes:
- Working with the organization to clearly define the scope of the investigation
- Establishing channels of communications (confidential when necessary) with relevant constituents, such as telephone hotlines and dedicated email addresses
- Conducting interviews of all involved parties and witnesses
- Identifying, collecting, preserving, and reviewing documents, including emails, texts, social media data, personnel files, witness statements, handbooks and manuals relevant to an investigation
- Preparing a public-facing report of our findings, when this is consistent with the organization’s objectives
Leveraging in-house resources allows us to keep elements of each investigation centrally organized, providing security, independence and confidentiality to the investigative process. For example, Ropes & Gray has a dedicated advanced e-discovery and A.I. strategies team offering leadership that has been ranked as the best by Chambers and The Legal 500, as well as multilingual discovery attorneys and a team of litigation technology professionals. The practice has mastered the application of machine learning in document review and is ideally positioned to help clients navigate this and the many other aspects of e-discovery critical to sensitive investigations. We also have long-standing partnerships with other, trusted service providers, such as forensic psychiatrists and private investigators, for situations in which those resources are integral to the investigative process.
