In an age marked by global regulatory convergence, high-stakes financial scrutiny and expanding state surveillance, the professional services industry is undergoing an intellectual and structural renaissance. No longer is the financial expert, the chartered accountant, MBA, or risk consultant the uncontested gatekeeper of corporate compliance and forensic analysis.
Enter the criminal lawyer: a professional trained not merely in statutes and taxation but in evidence, procedural fairness, enforcement behaviour and constitutional safeguards. The Big Four - Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG - are rapidly recalibrating their internal architecture to accommodate a new legal mind: not the generic LL.M. or in-house counsel, but the criminal law specialist. Their expertise spans trial advocacy, custodial risk, digital forensics and judicial review.
In white-collar contexts, where financial conduct intersects with penal risk, only these lawyers can build preventive frameworks and litigation-ready responses grounded in procedural integrity and legal privilege. This article explores how and why criminal lawyers are becoming indispensable to Big Four firms, particularly in tax litigation, white-collar crime advisory, corporate investigations and forensic audits.
It is a myth that tax practice is the exclusive domain of accountants. Under Section 288 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, any person, including advocates, can represent clients before tax authorities and tribunals. Further, Section 30 of the Advocates Act, 1961 grants advocates the right to appear before all courts and tribunals.
What makes criminal lawyers uniquely valuable in tax disputes is their ability to interpret tax not merely as a fiscal obligation, but as a legal imposition subject to constitutional scrutiny. They are adept at raising challenges based on Article 14 (equality before law), Article 19(1)(g) (right to practice trade/profession) and Article 265 (no tax without authority of law).
In high-stakes disputes involving retrospective taxation, GAAR invocation and faceless assessment irregularities, criminal lawyers can identify violations of natural justice, procedural unfairness and abuse of discretion, dimensions that accountants often overlook.
Furthermore, many tax offences such as willful concealment, false statement, or abetment, are criminalised under Sections 276 to 278 of the Income Tax Act. Defence strategies here demand knowledge of mens rea, burden of proof and evidentiary exclusion, all core to criminal law.
In jurisdictions such as the US and EU, tax professionals work under the constant threat of penal enforcement. India is catching up. Hence, Big Four firms now realise that compliance is not complete without constitutional defensibility, and only a lawyer rooted in criminal law can provide that armour.
One of the most powerful yet under-utilised strategic tools in high-risk engagements is legal privilege, a safeguard that belongs exclusively to advocates under Sections 126–129 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
In investigations conducted by agencies like the CBI, ED, SFIO or state police economic offences wings, clients require sanctuary for honest disclosure. Only criminal lawyers can receive confidential information from clients without fear of compelled testimony or evidentiary breach.
Contrast this with accountants or consultants: their notes, emails and internal memos are fully discoverable. There is no statutory privilege protecting communication with a CA or management consultant.
Therefore, when structuring voluntary disclosures, negotiating compounding, or designing internal investigations, the involvement of a criminal lawyer enables frank, protected conversations. This isn't just a theoretical benefit, it is a practical necessity in environments where dawn raids and custodial threats are routine.
In the modern white-collar landscape, the role of forensic analysis has evolved. It is no longer limited to detecting accounting anomalies or expense fraud. Instead, it involves:
Digital forensics and chain-of-custody analysis
Cross-border asset tracing
Seizure protocol compliance
Regulatory subpoena responses
Criminal lawyers, unlike chartered accountants, are trained in the rules of evidence, admissibility, search-and-seizure jurisprudence and privilege. This gives them a critical advantage in managing enforcement exposure.
For example, in a matter involving suspected insider trading, a forensic accountant might highlight unusual trading patterns. But a criminal lawyer will assess the legality of evidence collection, the admissibility of digital logs under Section 65B of the Evidence Act and the client's exposure under SEBI’s PFUTP Regulations.
Within Big Four firms, these lawyers are now indispensable to teams handling:
Internal investigations post-whistleblower complaints
Third-party due diligence under anti-bribery statutes
Data privacy incident response
Cybercrime advisory
Their role is no longer reactive. They are now proactively designing frameworks to prevent criminal liability, identify red flags and fortify clients’ positions before regulators arrive.
Big Four firms are now strategically deploying criminal law specialists in several high-risk domains:
Forensics and internal investigations
Preparing legal playbooks for search and seizure
Advising on employee interviews and privilege implications
Vetting whistleblower complaints for criminal exposure
Regulatory litigation and disputes
Drafting replies to ED, SFIO and ROC summons
Representing clients before High Courts in writ petitions
Advising on contempt risks and interim relief strategy
Tax matters and criminal prosecution defence
Handling summons under Section 131 of the Income Tax Act
Preparing for Section 276-C prosecution defenses
Advising on GST fraud under CGST Act provisions
Cybercrime and data security advisory
Responding to ransomware, data theft and phishing incidents
Advising on IT Act compliance and Section 43A liabilities
Interfacing with CERT-In and police cyber cells
Anti-corruption compliance
Designing due diligence protocols
Implementing anti-bribery policies under FCPA and UK Bribery Act
Defending clients against Prevention of Corruption Act investigations
These are not merely advisory roles. Criminal lawyers shape the very architecture of client safety, liberty and reputational integrity.
The elephant in the room remains Rule 49 of the Bar Council of India Rules. It prohibits full-time salaried employment for advocates while retaining the right to practice law.
This rule is outdated. It fails to account for:
The rise of multidisciplinary firms
The demand for full-time in-house legal roles
The reality of hybrid professionals
The Supreme Court in Bar Council of India v. AK Balaji (2018) observed that foreign law firms can offer non-litigation services through partnerships. Indian law must go further and allow criminal lawyers to be full-time employees in regulated environments like Big Four firms, subject to ethical safeguards.
We must recognise that a criminal lawyer inside a Big Four firm is not diluting the legal profession but fortifying it, by bringing legal integrity to corporate India.
To unlock the full potential of criminal lawyers within corporate ecosystems, policymakers must consider the following reforms:
Amend Rule 49 to allow structured, transparent employment of advocates in consulting firms.
Create legal forensics postgraduate programs in premier law universities (NLUs).
Launch certification programs in white-collar crime, cyber law and digital compliance.
Clarify legal privilege for in-house legal consultants and non-litigation lawyers.
Establish joint oversight panels (BCI, ICAI, ICSI, MCA) to regulate hybrid professionals.
Encourage law–consulting alliances to foster cross-disciplinary expertise.
These initiatives will democratise access to legal defence, increase the talent pipeline and ensure that India’s regulatory ecosystem is balanced by legal competence, not just financial expertise.
The legal landscape in India, and globally, is undergoing a tectonic shift. Regulatory ecosystems are no longer confined to sectoral compliance; they have become cross-jurisdictional, invasive and increasingly punitive in nature. The boundaries between civil non-compliance and criminal misconduct are rapidly dissolving, exposing corporates and their officers to a new regime of custodial risk, reputational damage and irreversible liberty deprivation.
In this transformed terrain, the relevance of criminal lawyers is no longer reactive or episodic; it is foundational. The Big Four firms have begun to realise that while financial consultants and tax experts may detect risk, only a criminal lawyer can mitigate that risk through the lens of admissible evidence, constitutional rights and procedural safeguards.
These legal professionals do not merely appear in courts after the damage has occurred. Instead, they are now embedded within corporate systems as:
Architects of internal governance structures;
Designers of privilege-preserving investigations;
Advisors on custodial safeguards and evidentiary compliance; and
Negotiators of liberty within an increasingly coercive enforcement framework.
The criminal lawyer has evolved from being a litigator to becoming a legal sentinel - a defender not just of rights, but of the very corporate conscience of institutions. In an era where a misstep in an email, an unrebutted allegation in a compliance report, or a procedural error in a seizure can result in executive arrest or asset freezing, the presence of a criminal law-trained professional within advisory teams is no longer optional.
As India navigates data protection laws, expands its anti-corruption drive, strengthens economic offence prosecution and integrates global norms like FATF, FCPA and GDPR, the role of criminal lawyers will only deepen. Their training in liberty-centric litigation, judicial review and rights-based defence is the only real insurance in a regulatory age where the first encounter with the State may be through a search warrant, not a show-cause notice.
The Bar Council, legal academia and corporate leadership must now act. They must modernise Rule 49, create postgraduate and executive education programs in Legal Forensics and incentivise the systemic induction of criminal law professionals into consulting and advisory roles.
The time of passive compliance is over. The time of active legal resistance, built on procedural propriety and evidentiary command, is here.
In the balance between enforcement and ethics, between the State and the citizen, and between risk and remedy, it is the criminal lawyer who now stands as the final custodian of corporate liberty.
Nidhi Malhotra is Legal Manager - Governance, Risk and Compliance at Cyterico.