The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) found in a recent report that three of its agencies have failed to establish controls for information-sharing agreements with private-sector plaintiff-side law firms. According to the OIG, the lack of oversight over 48 agreements from January 2023 through June 2025 has given some third-party entities an unfair advantage. DOL claims that it did not enter into any information-sharing agreements during the first half of 2025.
The report identified what it termed as “significant internal-control deficiencies” in the common interest agreements executed by DOL and private law firms. The OIG claims that those agreements gave other parties an unfair advantage because they may have contained privileged investigative information.
The OIG’s audit and report resulted from a November 2024 request from former Chairwoman Virginia Foxx and a January 2025 request from subsequent Chairman Tim Walberg. The requests stemmed from allegations that DOL had inappropriately shared investigative information with private law firms and other non-governmental agencies.
First, the OIG noted the lack of consistent formal policies and procedures for these agreements across regional offices. The dearth of uniform policies led to oral and written agreements signed by various officials and attorneys, with no common standards, including at least one WHD staff member who lacked authority to represent the DOL. Agencies within DOL also failed to communicate agreements to one another.
Next, the agencies had no centralized tracking system or list of common interest agreements. Instead, the agencies stored each agreement in an individual case file. Although DOL first identified and provided 45 common interest agreements at OIG’s request, it later discovered an additional three agreements, thereby demonstrating a lack of a reliable tracking mechanism.
Further, the OIG identified two instances of information sharing and interactions between DOL attorneys and non-governmental agencies that created a potential conflict of interest. For example, DOL signed a common interest agreement with a law firm in April 2023. An attorney from that law firm served as Senior Counsel to the Secretary of Labor from November 2023 until July 2024, then returned to the same law firm.
Finally, the DOL shared investigative information that otherwise would not have been available under normal discovery rules in at least two cases. In those situations, it also was impossible to determine the full scope of the information shared due to a lack of documentation of conversations, face-to-face meetings, and communications on personal devices.
In response to these deficiencies, OIG issued various recommendations to the DOL. These recommendations included establishing uniform written policies on common interest agreements, developing coordination processes with agencies, and designing and implementing a tracking system. OIG also directed that the Solicitor of Labor define staff members’ roles and responsibilities, utilize bias monitoring, provide regular training to staff, and require staff to sign affidavits confirming that they were not employed with law firms or other third-party agencies.
DOL agreed with the OIG’s recommendations and set 90-day deadlines for creating and implementing four of the eight recommendations. The DOL also acknowledged the appearance of impropriety and potential risks of how its agencies have handled common interest agreements in the past.
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