Labor & Employment Law

The other side of Freedom of Information laws: dealing with information requests from government agencies

Admin lawyers are often called in when a client gets served with a request for information from a government agency. "Can they do this?" "This is going to cost us zillions!" "I don't have time for this!" "They want it when?"

It's up to the admin lawyer to reassure the client with "yes" (usually), "it will be expensive, but I can help", "make time", and "so we better get started ASAP".

On law.com's Legal Blog Watch, Eric Lipman has an article, "FTC Wants Lawyers to Compile More Info on Marketing of Food to Kids", that provides an example of such a request. It might be interesting to look at the FEDERAL REGISTER comments and follow the industry's responses.*

Back in prehistoric times, my adjunct antitrust professor was asked by a biglaw friend up north to find some smart, hungry lawyer to deal with such a problem. Seems a major international chemical company had been served with a US DoJ subpoena duces tecum in an antitrust probe, and needed a lawyer to review every document at a dyestuffs manufacturing plant in our state and identify all responsive documents.

Well, I don't know about smart, but I sure was hungry. I had been in practice less than a year, solo. So I spent ten weeks sifting through piles of files, making copies, sorting documents into boxes for each question. Drove 200 miles from home early Monday morning and back Friday evening - the client put me up and fed me during the week. I learned more about dye than I ever wanted.

Edward M. ?Ted? McClure

* Administrators and attorneys employed by state and municipal entities may wish to read the food industry's responses as their employers are not immune with respect to responding to such demands from federal agencies.

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on June 04, 2010 (boomark / email).