David Karp

David Karp is a former congressional investigator, in-house investigations counsel, and SEC enforcement attorney who represents companies and executives when more than one government body is asking questions. He brings more than 20 years of experience to congressional and parliamentary investigations, SEC and other regulatory enforcement matters, and complex civil litigation.

David’s practice covers congressional investigations, SEC enforcement and other regulatory defense, Congressional investigations defense, and complex civil litigation. In congressional and foreign parliamentary investigations, he represents companies from the first letter through document production, staff interviews, and hearings, and he prepares their executives to testify. In SEC and other regulatory matters, he handles subpoenas, Wells notices, and internal investigations. In civil litigation, he defends securities class actions and derivative suits and handles commercial disputes for plaintiffs and defendants.

Before joining Scale LLP, David served as an Associate General Counsel at McKinsey & Company. He led the firm’s responses to congressional and parliamentary investigations and prepared senior leaders to testify, directed internal investigations and responses to government inquiries, managed outside counsel, handled commercial disputes, pursuing claims and defending them. As the firm’s global anti-corruption legal lead, he advised consulting teams in more than 30 countries. He later led McKinsey’s government risk function for North America, advising on the firm’s work for federal, state, and local governments in the United States and Canada.

Before joining McKinsey, David was a senior counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services, where he led an investigation of anti-money-laundering compliance at multinational banks. He also spent nine years in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. He ran investigations of international banks that ended in admissions of wrongdoing. He received the Division Director’s Award on three occasions, for investigations he led and a task force he created. For four years, he advised the Division’s Directors on its enforcement priorities, investigation policy, resources, and reports to Congress. Earlier in his career, he defended securities class actions and shareholder derivative suits at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, tried a federal bank-fraud case at Lankler Siffert & Wohl LLP, and clerked for the late Hon. Jan E. DuBois in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.