The U.S. Department of Justice is considering major changes to the 8-year-old Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force as part of overall efforts to reduce unneeded regulation on business, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

In prepared remarks for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform's 18th annual Legal Reform Summit, Rosenstein said Justice is establishing a working group to offer recommendations on promoting individual accountability and corporate cooperation.

And in a statement that was likely music to many executives' ears, he said the group is reviewing the mandate of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force ”to evaluate whether it continues to meet current needs.” President Barack Obama established the task force in 2009 to strengthen the fight against financial crime after the financial crisis of 2008.

Eliminating or gutting the task force would be the icing on the cake for business advocacy groups, which already won a major victory Tuesday night in the U.S. Senate, which voted 51-50 to nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule that banned forced arbitration agreements for most consumer financial products.

The DOJ is also evaluating how to reward companies “that demonstrate true commitment to upholding the rule of law,” Rosenstein added.

The all-day litigation summit promoted a theme of how business could navigate a “legal jungle.” It included a session with Michelle Browdy, senior vice president and general counsel of IBM, on the role of general counsel in dealing with “Big Data” on a day-to-day basis as well as during litigation.

Rosenstein also said the DOJ needs more cooperation from business on cybercrime issues. “You need to protect your brand,” he emphasized. But he also urged them to help other companies at the same time. “If a company delays in disclosing a data breach or other potential cyber incident, that delay may prevent other innocent parties from taking steps to protect themselves,” he said.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the luncheon speaker. Giuliani also served as U.S. attorney in Manhattan for six years under President Ronald Reagan.

Other legal reform sessions involved:

• Emerging technologies and liability.
• Litigating and fixing class actions.
• Exploring trends in mass tort actions, particularly in asbestos and food labeling cases.
• A panel of state attorneys general discussing the Trump administration's impact on the federal regulatory environment and state enforcement issues.

The summit also included a panel on how plaintiffs lawyer advertising is causing problems among patients, consumers and juries. As part of the program, the ILR released a new report that says lawsuit ads targeting prescription drugs and medical devices have caused at least 61 serious medical events—including six deaths.

The report, “Bad for Your Health: Lawsuit Advertising Implications and Solutions,” cites a U.S. Food and Drug Administration report that stated patients stopped taking their prescribed medications, such as blood thinners, after seeing ads promoting lawsuits against the drugs' manufacturers.

The Chamber of Commerce urged the federal government to regulate plaintiffs attorney advertising.

ILR president Lisa Rickard said in a statement, “Plaintiff lawyer ads targeting prescription drugs are frightening people out of taking prescribed medicines, and in some cases, even scaring them to death. The ads illustrate that the modern litigation landscape resembles a jungle more than ever, and the plaintiffs' bar sees businesses as the prey.”