To outline the risks of whether or not a company should use a Joint Defense Agreement (JDA), Dorsey's Ed Magarian and Surya Saxena wrote an article for the Thomson Reuters/West publication Andrews Litigation Reporter entitled, "Joint Defense Agreements: What is a Responsible Company to Do?"
The article addresses the legal foundations of the joint defense privilege, the government's hostility to JDA's ("While corporations and employees still are often best served by sharing joint defense information, the corporation now has the added, and sometimes primary, interest of demonstrating that it is cooperating with a government investigation," the authors write), and the pitfalls of agreements allowing unilateral disclosure.
To read the considerations practitioners should undertake, as well as the full article, click on the PDF link above.
Used with permission: Joint Defense Agreements: What is a Responsible Company to Do? The Risk Such Agreements Impose on Companies And A Practical Solution for Addressing the Risk, published in Thomson-Reuters’ White-Collar Crime LR (September 2008, Volume 22, Issue 12).