Title: White-collar attorney defence strategies: an empirical study of a national sample

Authors: Petter Gottschalk

Addresses: BI Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: Every year, an average of 100 white-collar criminals are sentenced to prison in Norway. Based on newspaper reports and court documents, a database of more than 300 convicted criminals is applied in this research to answer the following research question: What links can be found from attorney defence strategies (substance defence, symbolic defence, and information control) to crime case characteristics (persons involved, money amount, and prison sentence)? A number of statistically significant relationships were identified: 1) substance defence varies positively with symbolic defence, positively with money amount in crime, and negatively with number of persons involved in crime; 2) information control varies negatively with money amount in crime and negatively with number of persons involved in crime; 3) symbolic defence varies positively with substance defence, negatively with information control, and positively with money amount in crime.

Keywords: substance defence; symbolic defence; information control; white-collar crime; white-collar lawyers; Norway; attorney defence strategies; money.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPL.2014.060088

International Journal of Private Law, 2014 Vol.7 No.2, pp.159 - 174

Published online: 18 Sep 2014 *

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