Employee attorneys near me: when a work problem is a criminal problem.

The two lanes, and the line between them.

Wage disputes, discrimination, wrongful termination, harassment - employment lawyers, plaintiff or defense side. The criminal lane opens when the workplace issue involves alleged theft, expense or payroll fraud, kickbacks, trade-secret movement, data access beyond authorization, safety incidents with injuries, or anything a company might refer to law enforcement. The tell: when HR stops scheduling “chats” and starts scheduling “interviews,” when a forensic firm images your laptop, when the meeting invite includes outside counsel - the matter has changed lanes, whatever the calendar entry says.

The warning everyone hears and nobody understands.

In an internal investigation, company counsel represents the company - the Upjohn warning they recite means your statements are privileged, but the privilege belongs to the employer, which can waive it and hand your interview to prosecutors whenever cooperation serves the company. Post-2015 DOJ policy explicitly rewards companies for serving up culpable individuals. Translation: the friendly lawyer across the table is building a file the company may trade. You are entitled to your own counsel before that interview, and asking for it is not an admission - it is the only professionally sane response once conduct with criminal texture is on the agenda.

The moves that protect you.

Do not resign in panic (severance and leverage die with the badge), do not delete anything (the obstruction case is worse than the underlying one), do not explain in the interview you have not prepared for, and do not use work devices to research your situation. Preserve your own copies of what you are lawfully entitled to keep - contracts, pay records, your sent notices. Then split the counsel question properly: an employment lawyer for the job, and where any criminal texture exists, defense counsel coordinating quietly behind them. When the company has two law firms, one person having none is not a strategy.

THE AUTHOR

Todd A. Spodek

Managing partner. Second-generation federal defense lawyer - the Netflix defense, the Fox and CNN analyst chair, and two decades of federal courtrooms.

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