Policing Financial Crime: Challenges in White-Collar Defense Lawyer Strategies

Petter Gottschalk

Abstract
White-collar crime lawyer defense strategies represent challenges in policing financial
crime. The white-collar crime attorney is a lawyer who is competent in general legal
principles and in the substantive and procedural aspects of the law related to upper-class
financial crime. The lawyer applies three defense strategies: substance defense strategy,
information control strategy, and symbolic defense strategy. To meet this challenge, the
police have to apply four policing strategies: information management strategy, knowledge
management strategy, information systems strategy, and value shop configuration strategy.
Based on a sample of 310 convicted white-collar criminals and their defense lawyers, this
paper presents results from statistical analysis of relationships between crime characteristics
and defense characteristics.

Keywords: Financial Crime, Defense Lawyer, Statistics, White-collar Crime, Police Strategy, Knowledge Management