DOJ Updates Guidance for Evaluating Corporate Compliance Programs

On April 30, 2019, the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced updated guidance for the Criminal Division’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs in charging and resolving criminal cases.

This memorandum highlights key updates and discusses the themes present across versions of the Guidance.  Overall, this newest version places greater emphasis on distilling “lessons learned” from misconduct, and on incorporating those lessons into the compliance program using objective metrics collected from monitoring and information gathering.  The Guidance also reinforces the Department’s review of third party management and the implementation of compliance tools in the M&A context.