Thomas Helck specializes in advising and defending clients in commercial and tax criminal law. Helck’s clients will particularly benefit from the HELCK Legal founder’s more than 15 years’ experience in white-collar and criminal tax law cases as a lawyer and a prosecutor. Individual defence, to which he now wants to devote more attention again, is usually less in demand at large law firms for conflict-of-interest reasons. However, he will still advise companies on criminal law and compliance issues. In addition, Helck is available as witness counsel for employees and as a point of contact for whistleblowers.

Before joining White & Case, Helck was a counsel at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for six years, and prior to that, a public prosecutor in Munich for five.

Helck’s departure comes just two months after another criminal law partner at White & Case in Germany, Karl-Jörg Xylander, moved to the Munich boutique CCI-Legal. The US firm's criminal practice at the partner level in Germany now consists of Dr Daniel Zapf, who joined from DLA Piper last year and who now heads the practice group, and Dr Tine Schauenburg.