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Max Hill KC, the former director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, has joined US law firm King & Spalding in London, adding to a growing number of ex-state prosecutors to have moved into private practice.
Hill started at Atlanta-founded King & Spalding this month as senior counsel in the firm’s special matters team, having stepped down as DPP at the end of his five-year term in October.
The high-profile barrister led the prosecution service during one of its most difficult eras, marked by the UK’s departure from the EU and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hill’s move follows in the footsteps of a number of senior lawyers that have joined large law firms at the end of their time in public office, including his DPP predecessor Dame Alison Saunders who joined UK “magic circle” firm Linklaters. Sir David Green, former director of the Serious Fraud Office, moved to Slaughter and May when he left the agency in 2018 and is now at US firm Cohen & Gresser.
The DPP is the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, which prosecutes criminal cases investigated by the police and some other organisations in England and Wales.
King & Spalding’s special matters team advises companies and individuals facing a potential government investigation. It is among the large international firms to have beefed up its white-collar crime practice over the past decade amid a climate of tougher global enforcement and laws such as the UK’s Bribery Act 2010.
In the ten years leading up to the 2020 pandemic, a series of cross-border probes funnelled work to white-collar lawyers in the City. But a decline in those large international cases in recent years has shifted focus towards areas such as compliance and civil litigation.
With the new Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act coming into force, expanding the UK’s powers to clamp down on offences including fraud and money laundering, Hill said he would be advising companies as they grapple with the new legislation.
“I think that there is a real opportunity now, perhaps more than before . . . to advise corporate clients here and internationally to strengthen their compliance,” Hill said in an interview with the Financial Times.
“What I’m seeing is a distinct narrowing of the gap that’s been there historically between civil, commercial and criminal litigation, and what that means is a far greater use of civil enforcement powers by criminal prosecutors,” he added.
Over the past decade, the UK has started using deferred prosecution agreements to resolve some criminal cases against companies. Under a DPA a criminal prosecution is suspended based on certain conditions, which can include the company paying a fine and helping to bring cases against individuals.
The CPS entered into its first-ever DPA last year with the gambling company Entain, forcing the UK-listed entity to pay £615mn for failing to prevent bribery.
Prior to becoming DPP, Hill spent three decades at the Bar prosecuting and defending a number of high-profile terrorism and homicide cases, including the Damilola Taylor murder trials and the 2005 London bombings.
He has also acted as counsel on a number of big-ticket, white-collar crime investigations such as the global foreign-exchange rigging scandal and the SFO’s probe into the Kazakh mining group Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation.