White-collar crime lawyers: the case of Transocean in court

Abstract

White-collar criminals are persons of respectability and high social status, who commit financial crime in the course of their occupation. In a national sample of 305 convicted criminals, the average age was 48 years old, and the average sentence was 2.2 years in prison. White-collar crime lawyers defend criminals in court. The case of Transocean is presented in this article, where the company and their prosecuted advisors will probably spend about $10 million on lawyers in the first round in a district court. This emphasises a distinguishing feature of white-collar criminals from street criminals, where white-collar criminals can pay for a knowledgeable defence. Some criminals may have quite famous lawyers, who are well-known for getting their probably guilty clients off. A knowledge level perspective is applied in this paper, where the relative knowledge between defence and prosecution has an influence on how the case is handled and possibly even on the court verdict.