The fraud litigation spiral

In our current dire economic circumstances, the usual diet of commercial lawyers—high levels of transactional work, property deals, mergers and acquisitions—are seeing a downturn in the level and quality of the work undertaken. Equally, because of the strained finances of clients, fee levels tend to be lower than at other times.

There is, however, one area of the law where practitioners tend to experience work levels that are counter-cyclical. In fraud and asset recovery litigation, the experience is that work levels rise during periods of economic downturn. The reasons for this are largely self-explanatory: as business or individuals “go to the wall” or approach that point, attention necessarily is focussed on the reason for the failure. Creditors, and others having an interest in a business or an individual, will wish to know the reasons why it is that they cannot or may not be able to recover their money.

This interest is all the more