Profile: William (Mitch) R Mitchelson Jr

Business Crime

Biography: Business Crime

William R Mitchelson Jr is a partner at Alston & Bird. He concentrates on defence of government investigations, internal corporate investigations and corporate legal compliance. He serves as chair of the firm's False Claims Act working group and is also the designated Georgia legal contact for the Health Care Compliance Association.

Mr Mitchelson served as an assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Florida, criminal division, from 1990 to 1993. He has appeared on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports as a legal analyst.

Mr Mitchelson has written articles about - and is a regular speaker on - the practical considerations relating to corporate internal investigations and voluntary disclosures to the government, settling civil enforcement investigations with the government, the development of corporate compliance plans, professionalism in the criminal law and incorporating sentencing guidelines considerations into criminal trial strategy.

Recent engagements include representation in internal compliance-related investigations for national and international corporations; representation of multiple healthcare companies in Civil False Claims Act, including qui tam, litigation; successfully representing a corporation's compliance officer in a federal investigation - resulting in the dismissal of all charges - and successfully resolving parallel federal investigations for a former president of an international banking entity.

Mr Mitchelson received his undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1982 and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School with honours in 1985, where he was comment editor of University of Chicago Law Review. He served as a law clerk to Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.