Big law firm associates who put together Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) bulletins for firm clients just got the weekend off. This year, the Stanford Law School built a database with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP to showcase FCPA statistics through its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Clearinghouse. Despite being late to this game, Stanford’s database is impressive.

Readers of this column have been inundated with FCPA data for years. While we all love free information, Stanford’s FCPA database matters because it is visual and updated in real time. You don’t have to wait for that quarterly or annual email about whether FCPA cases are up or down—you can now satisfy your urge for FCPA data immediately. Need a cool chart for a presentation? Stanford has you covered. Need a synopsis of the latest case? It’s one click away. How about an FCPA Top 10 list? Stanford has them all. Here are some examples that would make Letterman blush:

• Monetary sanctions imposed on any single defendant to an FCPA-related enforcement action.

• Largest total bribery payments made in violation of the FCPA.

• Largest sanction to bribe ratios for all FCPA-related enforcement actions filed since the FCPA’s enactment.

• Largest sanction to revenue ratios for all FCPA-related enforcement actions filed since the FCPA’s enactment.

• Largest sanction to profit ratios for all FCPA-related enforcement actions filed since the FCPA’s enactment.

• Countries where bribes were offered or paid in violation of the FCPA, for all the years since the FCPA’s enactment.

…

Stanford cornered the market on these sorts of databases years ago. The school manages the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which catalogs securities class actions; the Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse, which now operates as a commercial venture called Lex Machina offering real-time data on IP litigation; the Stanford Securities Litigation Analytics project, which tracks and collects data on securities class action litigation and SEC enforcement actions; and the Global Class Actions Exchange, which provides country reports, statutes and rules concerning collective litigation practices. It now looks like professor Joseph Grundfest (who manages all the databases, teaches law school and is a director at KKR among other things) and his Stanford team have their sights on the FCPA and are working on expanding the FCPA database to include SEC and DOJ investigations that precede enforcement actions.

The database czar, Stanford’s Kristen Savelle, noted that “the FCPAC strives to make data around FCPA enforcement actions easily accessible and allows users to quickly sort and catalog complex enforcement actions through narrowly tailored searches over more than 40 data fields [with] charts and heat maps depicting the changing landscape of FCPA enforcement in real-time, allowing users to gauge past trends and anticipate future developments.”

Read More