Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA)

With the increasing internationalisation of criminal investigations, mutual legal assistance has become a key weapon in the armoury of all law enforcement agencies. We have extensive experience in acting for governments, companies, professional firms and individuals who may be affected by mutual legal assistance requests.

Advice is often required to ensure compliance with legal and professional obligations. This can be particularly problematic for professionals or financial institutions and other issues may arise concerning relationships with clients which we can help to address.

Services

The UK has discretion in deciding whether to accept requests and we can advise on trying to get requests refused, even in advance of the request being made.

We have wide experience in dealing with requests relating to politically motivated cases and have dealt with some of the seminal cases in this area.

We can advise governments who wish to initiate requests to the UK to obtain admissible evidence for their own domestic proceedings. We can ensure these requests are appropriately framed and assist in ensuring that the process operates smoothly in the UK to obtain this evidence as quickly as possible. In particular, we can represent a government’s interests in any legal challenges brought by the subject of a request.