Prosecutor fights white-collar crime and guides students

ADAM D. LIPPE

Age: 35
Profession: Assistant State’s Attorney, Baltimore County; adjunct professor at University of Maryland School of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Strayer University and Stevenson University.
Achievements: Editor of several manuals for national bar review courses. Positions on Johns Hopkins University alumni committees.

Q. What are your responsibilities in the Office of the State’s Attorney?
A. I am an Assistant State’s Attorney, the chief of the White Collar Crime Unit, which handles complex embezzlements and frauds, including corporate identity theft, internet scams, check and credit card frauds, large materials thefts, financial exploitation of vulnerable adults, and welfare / assistance fraud. I continue to occasionally handle other matters, such as murder prosecutions.

Q. Do assistant state’s attorneys have areas of specialization? If so, what is yours?
A. Most Assistant State’s Attorneys are generalists, but there is the opportunity to specialize once you enter a specific unit or division. I handled narcotics cases for several years before becoming the chief of the White Collar Crime Unit.

Q. What prepared you to be a state prosecutor?
A. Four years working hard in college, followed by three years straight through law school is a good start, but to become a prosecutor has be more than a desire, but a want to do something very special. I worked for two and a half years as a law clerk at the Office of the City Solicitor for Baltimore City. There I learned the patience of civil litigation, which I apply to my criminal practice … particularly in applying strategy and legal reasoning.

Q. What is most rewarding about being a prosecutor?
A. I can and do make a difference in the lives of victims who are unable to speak for themselves (as in the case of murder victims and for children), and hold people accountable for their actions. More than just seeking punishment, I feel I can put some sanity back to society’s low expectations that violence and habitual crime is somehow acceptable.

Q. Teaching at four universities must take a tremendous amount of time and energy. How and why do you do it?
A. I have the luxury, often taking vacation days or after work, to help students seeking to advance their goals to become successful and important in their own right. Teaching is validation that I know what I know, and what I am saying is accurate and true. You know very quickly, through teaching, whether or not you understand the material you are trying to convey. It also keeps me sharp in areas outside of criminal law, such as in business law, and current with the expectations of the audience, my students. I find it very rewarding.

Q. What about practicing law surprises law students most after graduation?
A. Unless you have learned to “push the paper” and interned or gained legal employment during law school … actually practicing law is terribly difficult. There are a lot of pressures, including the long hours, and family and economic needs, that I think push newly minted lawyers to reconsider their careers. New lawyers who quickly become disgruntled and leave the legal profession do so, I think, because of poor planning during law school and not having had a good first legal job. Meaningful mentoring and apprenticeships is talk about a good deal, but in practice rarely exists.

Q. What would you change about states’ bar exams? Is the process a good one?
A. The bar exam is an important hurdle, one which law schools should do more to help law students understand and pass. Law schools, for the most part, do not teach for the bar exam. Since it is not part of the schools’ agenda, private companies are the sole source for learning to pass the bar.

Q. What changes have you seen in the past decade in the committing of fraud?
A. The ease of credit and financial instruments makes fraud inevitable. The ability to get multiple credit cards, move money in and out of accounts, along with the wholesale abandonment by companies of routine random audits leaves the potential for abuse readily apparent. By way of example, as has been explained to me, the paint and electrical departments make money, the asset protection department does not. Companies spend tons of money on marketing to bring in the dollars, but leave the backdoor open for thieves to steal anything which is not bolted down … including payroll and inventory. Financial crime is more prevalent, but the techniques are surprisingly easy and replicated in every industry.

Q. What advice do you have for the public to avoid becoming a fraud victim?
A. Question where your money goes. If you are a small-business owner who does not spend a lot of time on the financials, then get better insurance for employee dishonesty because you will become a victim. Every owner should have bank statements and cleared checks sent to their home (rather than the office) for review. Random audits, not by the accountant who only compares the numbers given, but by trained forensic auditors, is well worth it. The average corporate loss that I see is in the area of $40,000 to $120,000, with very little in the way of restitution ever recovered.