Joan Loughnane Joan Loughnane, partner in the White Collar Government Litigation & Investigations practice at Sidley Austin.

For Joan Loughnane, adapting to new roles was a key part of working in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Over the past 15 years, Loughnane has served in a number positions, including acting chief of the complex frauds and cybercrime unit and, most recently, chief counsel to the U.S. Attorney. Loughnane also served briefly as acting Deputy U.S. Attorney following the 2017 firing of Preet Bharara.

To be sure, it wasn't just Loughnane's responsibilities that evolved during her time in the Southern District, but also the crimes she prosecuted. Working to combat cybercrimes, for instance, gave the seasoned prosecutor a front row seat to just how much cybercriminals have evolved their tactics over the past decade.

In the midst of her move to Sidley Austin as a partner in its White Collar Government Litigation & Investigations practice, Loughnane spoke with Legaltech News about her time at the Southern District and her work prosecuting cybercrimes.

LTN: Why did you choose move to the private sector?

JL: Well, I was very lucky to serve as a prosecutor for 15 years. But it's time for a new challenge. And I was attracted to Sidley because it has a unique combination of white collar, cybersecurity and regulatory enforcement practices and a collegial group of lawyers, including my former colleagues from the Southern District. So that was the perfect combination to return to private practice.

What do you hope to accomplish as a partner at Sidley?

I hope that I will be able to use what I learned during my time in government to help clients understand the questions that prosecutors are trying to answer at each critical stage during an investigation. For example, when making a decision about whether to bring a charge, or if they're charged, when deciding on an appropriate resolution in a case.

What do you believe corporate counsel gets wrong when it comes to responding to government investigations?

I think the most helpful things for corporate counsel handling a government investigation or an enforcement action are good lines of communications with the prosecutors and candor with the government. That candor gives counsel credibility, and that can be very important as the investigation progresses.

What were your responsibilities as chief counsel to the U.S. Attorney?

At the Southern District, the chief counsel reports directly to the U.S. Attorney and provides advice on legal and strategic issues whether they come in investigations, in pretrial litigation, or in trial. It could be any strategic issue that arises in any case across the office, whether it's civil or criminal.  And there really is an endless variety of issues that come up in cases.

Has it been challenging moving into different roles while at the SDNY?

For me, serving in all those different roles was very fortunate. It was an opportunity because each role gave me a new perspective on the work and I learned an enormous amount. Chief counsel and U.S. deputy attorney are different tales. Deputy U.S. attorney oversees all aspects of the work done by all attorneys in the office, both on the criminal and civil side.

I would say that I worked with prosecutors there across the office, whether they were in securities unit, the terrorism unit, the cybercrime unit, the civil rights unit or the environmental unit on the civil side. So it really is a role that gave me the opportunity to work with prosecutors throughout the office and on issues in many different areas of the law.

Can you talk about the type of work you did as acting chief of the complex frauds and cybercrime unit?

So both as acting chief and during my time on the executive staff I worked with our cyber prosecutors, and they are incredibly talented prosecutors. I would say that work was particularly interesting because over the years cybercrime grew exponentially, and it changed.

At the beginning it was often the simple theft of valuable information, but by the end cybercrime was often committed in service of another crime altogether, whether that was securities fraud, extortion of something else, etc. So those changes—the variety and the increasing sophistication of cybercrime— made that work incredibly interesting and rewarding.