• Text

U.S. Pressures Firms Not to Pay Staff Legal Fees

Defense lawyers are closely watching an accounting-fraud case in New Hampshire that they see as the latest government effort to stop companies from paying the legal fees of indicted employees.

In the past three years, federal prosecutors in New York, Alabama and, now, Concord, N.H., have pursued a strategy that puts companies at risk of being branded as uncooperative if they don't cut off such payments. Lawyers say that could be tantamount to convicting defendants before they have even had a trial, since they can't properly...