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When Luxury Meets Liability

How a lawful investigative strategy could have avoided a corporate scandal

LVMH, the French multinational luxury goods conglomerate behind Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, was facing scrutiny from investigative journalists, creating the sort of reputational risk that often leads companies to seek more information.

That instinct is understandable. When a company believes its reputation, business interests or legal position may be at risk, it wants to understand who is involved, what information exists and what may happen next.

But in this case, the methods became the problem.

Bernard Squarcini, the former head of France’s domestic intelligence service, later worked as a security consultant for LVMH. His role is important because he was not simply a corporate security adviser. As a former senior intelligence official, he brought access, relationships and tradecraft from the public sector into a private-sector engagement, which is exactly where legal, ethical and reputational boundaries can become dangerous if they are not clearly defined.

In March 2025, Squarcini was convicted after prosecutors alleged he misused government contacts and public resources, including confidential information, while consulting with LVMH. The case also involved surveillance and infiltration targeting a left-wing publication and journalist-turned-politician François Ruffin.

For companies and law firms, the lesson is not simply that “spying” can go too far. The more practical lesson is high-risk intelligence work often becomes dangerous when the mission is poorly defined, the information source is not scrutinized and the investigative team fails to provide clear legal and ethical guardrails.

Much of the information companies seek in these moments can often be obtained through lawful, ethical and defensible methods: open-source research, public records, litigation support tools, social media analysis, corporate records, media monitoring, reputation mapping and structured due diligence. The issue is not always whether the information exists. The issue is whether it can be shown to have been obtained legally, ethically and in a way that can withstand scrutiny from a court or opposing counsel.

That distinction is where Legalis is different.

Legalis helps clients move from “we need information” to a clearly defined, risk-assessed investigative strategy. Rather than simply taking an assignment at face value, including surveillance, background research, source development or intelligence gathering, Legalis works with clients to clarify the real problem: What are we trying to learn? Why do we need it? What lawful options are available? What are the legal, ethical, reputational and evidentiary risks of each path?

This matters because intelligence operations can create serious blowback if they are compromised or later challenged. Improperly sourced information can expose clients, lawyers and investigators to allegations involving privacy violations, trespass, misuse of confidential material, professional discipline, reputational damage and, in extreme cases, criminal scrutiny. In litigation, it can also undermine the value of the information itself if the process used to obtain it is not defensible.

A strong intelligence process should leave a clear record: the objective, the approved methods, the source of information, the legal rationale, the risk assessment and the steps taken to avoid crossing ethical or legal boundaries. This allows counsel and clients to be confident the information is accurate and was obtained properly.

The LVMH/Squarcini matter shows that in intelligence work, the method can matter just as much as the information itself. The case became a test of the boundaries of private intelligence work in France.

But no company or law firm wants to become the test case.

Beyond Cybersecurity

The Challenge:
Many Cybersecurity and Personal Safety training courses do not specifically address the needs of attorneys, particularly those who travel internationally or have vulnerable clients. The average cybersecurity course is usually taught from a technical rather than an operational perspective. Navigating issues of protecting privileged communications while crossing international borders, as well as protecting the clients themselves, requires a higher level of preparation.

The Result:

Legalis developed and taught a course specifically for our client using techniques developed through multiple overseas deployments with the intelligence community and military special operations forces. The course focused on understanding how and why hostile actors could target their firm, communications security (not just cybersecurity), surveillance detection, and how to secure personal electronic devices while traveling and crossing international borders. The course was well received by our client and contributed to the resilience of their organization. We do not market this training separately and only provide it as an advisory service to established clients.

When Time is of the Essence

The Challenge:

In a negligent construction case, where a witness shared detailed knowledge about the inner workings of the construction company being sued, the respondent challenged the deposition of that witness citing marital privilege. The time to respond to the challenge was limited due to the schedule of the hearings and, in this jurisdiction, marriage and divorce records were not available without a written request by mail. Our client, a real estate and business litigation firm, needed answers quickly.

The Result:

Legalis aggressively seeks out and acquires cutting edge AI enabled open-source intelligence tools. By searching multiple data sources quickly, we uncovered a data point indicating a divorce case number and court, conclusively negating the opponents’ assertions. Due to procedures for requesting records, finding such divorce information would normally have taken several weeks.