Specialization in penal law

The need to specialize has been felt in the field of legal services for some decades now. Companies as well as individual clients are expecting competent legal advice by attorneys specialized in the field related to their problems. Criminal law today has grown enormously in scope since the time, when criminals were outsiders of society and a normal citizen needed no defense counsel.

During the last two decades there has been a strong tendency for prosecutors - supported by certain trends in legislation - to make use of penal law as a convenient mean of counteracting and correcting unwanted developments in society, a function which was formerly and rightly a task of politics itself. In this process of using - and abusing - criminal law for short time political remedies in controversial fields one can observe that individuals and institutions/ companies now are in need of legal advice and counsel that are far from being accused of "run of the mill" criminal acts.

This development has led to two different models of specialization in the field of criminal law: On one hand big law firms, that render legal services in many fields, have also created their own "criminal law departments". Our law firm very early followed a different path: we chose to specialize exclusively in the field of criminal law and to seek cooperation with other law firms that are competent in other fields of law whenever the actual case calls for this. Although a lot may speak for an "all-round" service in one law firm, we are convinced that ongoing legal advice in the areas of civil law, commercial law, administrative law or tax law should be separated strictly and institutionally from the (mostly retrospective) assessment of actions by a criminal counsel.