The Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing Memorandum (the Yates Memo), issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on September 9, 2015, lays out a new, six-part policy relating to the investigation and prosecution of individuals involved in corporate wrongdoing. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the new policy requires that a company must provide the government with “all relevant facts relating to the individuals responsible for the misconduct” in order for the company “to be eligible for any cooperation credit.” Historically, “cooperation credit was a sliding scale of sorts” for companies allowing them to receive “at least some credit for cooperation, even if they failed to fully disclose all facts about individuals.” Under the new policy, “providing complete information about individuals’ involvement in wrongdoing is a threshold hurdle that must be crossed” before the DOJ will consider any cooperation credit. This all-or-nothing requirement begs many unanswered questions about the consequence to the attorney-client and work product privileges as part of both the corporation’s internal investigation process and the government’s cooperation credit analysis. (more…)