Clients seek the advice of Sidley’s lawyers in all aspects of internal investigations, corporate criminal matters, and regulatory enforcement. Our team is well-versed in providing clients with practical recommendations for complying with requirements, mitigating risk, and navigating the latest developments that could impact their business. We have deep insight and institutional knowledge of the role of the different state regulators within states, as some state attorneys general are more aggressive than their state regulatory agencies. Our team brings decades of experience with all state-specific nuances, the extent of their activism, and how the state activity level has evolved.
“Sidley has a strong interdisciplinary team fielding several former prosecutors with deep experience across the breadth of high-stakes enforcement issues faced by major corporations. Notable anti-corruption expertise demonstrated across a range of global industries, including healthcare, energy and banking.”
Chambers USA 2025, Corporate Crime & Investigations: The Elite, Nationwide
How We Add Value
We have represented clients in investigations by state attorney general offices and other state enforcement agencies across the country. We have deep experience both in vigorously opposing these entities to protect our clients’ interests and in cooperating with these entities when appropriate. We maintain a broad national network of relationships with state attorneys general offices. When clients face government investigations or inquiries, we develop strategic solutions based on the specifics of the investigation and the circumstances — which may range from vigorous advocacy to demonstrate that our clients committed no misconduct and have no liability, to cooperative discussions in order to resolve matters fairly and efficiently.
Ranked in 10 national practice area categories — including Tier 1 in six categories
Benchmark Litigation 2025
Our state attorneys general and local enforcement experience spans industries and legal disciplines, including:
- Antitrust: Our Antitrust and Competition lawyers frequently represent clients in connection with state attorneys general investigations of allegedly anticompetitive conduct, helping clients to end the investigations without incident, or where necessary, negotiate commercially appropriate conduct changes to address concerns of enforcement authorities. Our goal is to persuade the authority to close its investigation, proceed civilly rather than criminally, or recommend another approach leading toward a favorable outcome. Our clients include not only the subjects of such proceedings, but also complainants, third-party witnesses, and recipients of questionnaires and compulsory process.
For matters that must be litigated in court, Sidley has a deep and talented bench of antitrust lawyers, many with experience as former regulators and prosecutors. Our lawyers represent clients in cases involving claims of price fixing, market allocation, actual or attempted monopolization, and other alleged antitrust violations, including in areas of emerging focus such as algorithmic pricing. We also litigate private and public challenges to proposed mergers and acquisitions. Our antitrust lawyers collaborate with colleagues across Sidley’s practice areas, including working closely with the firm’s preeminent eDiscovery group, which is widely recognized for its successful track record in high-profile, complex antitrust matters spanning multiple jurisdictions.
- Consumer Protection: Sidley’s multidisciplinary consumer protection team guides clients through every stage of their most complex state-level enforcement challenges, from compliance counseling to individual and group state attorneys general investigations, to trials and everything in between. We help clients navigate their most high-profile and bet-the-company cases that have set precedents and standards across industries, and we work closely with clients to develop strategic approaches to investigations and inquiries. Our lawyers regularly advise on regulatory developments, manage risk assessments, and conduct internal investigations.
- Environmental and Energy: With years of experience handling high-stakes criminal and civil enforcement matters, Sidley’s environmental team knows every aspect of the legal process, from the first government contact through resolution of the government’s allegations. We represent clients regarding existing environmental regimes, and provide counseling on evolving environmental issues, such as how the administration’s deregulatory agenda impacts our clients. We are distinguished by having the largest number of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Justice lawyers of any firm in our market, and we leverage this background to represent clients in the energy sector facing a particularly complex set of environmental requirements. Unlike most firms, Sidley has an environmental policy team that provides additional levers when dealing with state AGs. One of our Environmental, Health, and Safety partners previously served as the EPA’s head of policy, and on the staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees EPA operations.
- Financial Services: Sidley is regularly recognized for our significant experience in all aspects of internal investigations, corporate criminal matters, and regulatory enforcement, particularly for financial services clients. We help clients review, design, and implement comprehensive and targeted compliance and ethics programs with the goal of forestalling future regulatory issues and supporting a corporate culture of ethical conduct. Drawing on our first-hand knowledge of the complex financial services regulatory arena, and our relationships with state financial services regulators, we work with clients to develop best practices for compliance.
- Privacy and Cybersecurity: Our experienced and highly ranked privacy and cybersecurity team has consistently been called upon to advise companies on many of the largest and most complex global cyber investigation and data privacy matters for more than 20 years. These matters frequently involve parallel investigations from international, federal, and state regulators and enforcement agencies, including state attorneys general and industry-specific regulators, such as the New York Department of Financial Services. We have substantial experience advising clients in responding to such inquiries. Successfully navigating such investigations requires not only a deep understanding of the complex layers of privacy and information security laws and regulations, but also an ability to articulate highly technical matters to regulators and their experts. Our team engages in and advises on such matters regularly and in close coordination with our government enforcement team.
- Regulatory Litigation: Our Regulatory Litigation group frequently represents clients in litigation over agency rulemaking at both the state and local level; civil litigation against agencies; civil litigation in highly regulated industries; and matters related to corporate policies and compliance. With years of experience and a deep bench, we are positioned to advise clients at all stages of the rulemaking process, from helping craft comments and otherwise engaging directly with the agency, to challenging rules in judicial or administrative courts. Our lawyers effectively foresee hurdles, balancing between regulatory assessment and trial litigation. By pairing our regulatory and litigation practices, we craft rulemaking strategies that are efficacious with the agency, and that create an administrative record that positions our clients well for any ensuing litigation or arbitration.
- Securities Enforcement and Regulatory: Our team has a strong track record in resolving some of the most significant multi-state investigations facing market participants and public companies. Over the past decade, we’ve handled more than a dozen prominent investigations by state attorneys general, state securities regulators, and state financial regulators into insider trading, long-term capital gains tax issues for investors, and cybersecurity. Our team collaborates with many other leading practices across the firm, including working closely with our Investment Funds group, Public Companies practice, and White Collar Defense and Investigations practice. Clients consistently look to our legal, business, and practical insights to help them navigate their most sensitive enforcement and compliance challenges.
- White Collar Defense and Investigations: We have one of the country’s top-ranked white collar teams with a proven record of representing clients in the largest and most complex investigations, many of which are multijurisdictional. This includes many investigations by both individual state attorneys general and multistate investigations, as well as those by the U.S. Department of Justice and other U.S.-based and international government enforcement agencies. We use our strong and deep experience across investigative agencies to develop smart, comprehensive strategies with our clients based on the applicable facts, law, and risk calculus in response to both civil or criminal state enforcement investigations. We seamlessly incorporate our colleagues’ extensive industry-specific experience to bring insight and creativity in finding factual and legal gaps in the investigating agencies’ theories and in understanding their perspective.
