The DOJ Just Changed What They Expect From You

In November 2024, the DOJ Antitrust Division rewrote its corporate compliance evaluation guidance — expanding scope to civil violations, adding requirements around ephemeral messaging, and making it clear that annual training decks are no longer sufficient. SideNote.ai is the technology that meets the new standard.

Your Board Is Asking Questions You Can't Answer With a Training Certificate

The DOJ's updated guidance now instructs prosecutors to investigate whether boards have compliance expertise, hold private compliance sessions, and what information they've reviewed regarding misconduct. That scrutiny flows directly to the GC. Your compliance program needs to be demonstrable, quantifiable, and real-time.

Proactive, Not Reactive

The DOJ's November 2024 guidance explicitly evaluates whether compliance programs are designed to "detect and deter" violations — not just respond to them after the fact. SideNote educates employees on antitrust risk in real time, preventing the prohibited conduct itself. That's the standard now.

Ephemeral Messaging Coverage

The DOJ now specifically asks about company policies on ephemeral messaging, preservation settings, and personal device communications. SideNote's OS-level agent monitors all applications on company-owned devices — catching risk regardless of the platform or whether messages are set to disappear.

Board-Ready Evidence

Prosecutors now evaluate whether the board has been briefed on compliance program effectiveness. SideNote's dashboard gives you quantifiable prevention metrics — alerts prevented, risk trends by department, education engagement — that translate directly into board-ready reporting.

Civil and Criminal Coverage

The updated DOJ guidance now covers civil antitrust violations in addition to criminal. Your compliance program needs to address both. SideNote's models are trained across the full spectrum — from per se criminal violations like price fixing to civil claims like exclusive dealing and MFN clause abuse.

What SideNote Looks Like for a GC

Your VP of Business Development drafts an email to the integration planning team during an active HSR waiting period: "Let's get their team aligned on territory assignments before the deal closes so we can hit the ground running." SideNote coaches her instantly, explaining that territory allocation discussions during the HSR waiting period constitute gun jumping under the Clayton Act. She reads the explanation, understands why the underlying conduct is prohibited, and decides not to pursue the territory coordination until after closing.

What you see

Your compliance dashboard logs the prevented alert, anonymized. No surveillance of the individual. When the board asks about antitrust controls, you have quantifiable proof that the system works — exactly the kind of evidence the DOJ's updated guidance expects you to have.

The Enforcement Environment General Counsel Are Navigating

DOJ Guidance

Compliance Programs Under the Microscope

The DOJ's November 2024 update to its Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs now instructs prosecutors to assess ephemeral messaging policies, AI monitoring, whistleblower protections, and whether compliance is embedded into compensation structures including clawbacks.

State Enforcement

State AGs Are Opening a Second Front

In January 2026, Michigan's Attorney General filed a federal antitrust suit against five oil majors and the API, alleging a decades-long conspiracy to suppress competition. State-level antitrust enforcement is a growing vector of exposure that compounds federal risk.

Private Litigation

Treble Damages Are the Real Exposure

The consolidated Shale Oil Antitrust Litigation (MDL 3119) names eight major producers, with plaintiffs seeking treble damages and discovery of all executive communications. Private actions often follow regulatory investigations — and the damages multiply by three.

Give Your Board the Compliance Evidence the DOJ Now Expects

See how SideNote.ai transforms your antitrust compliance program from a policy binder into a real-time prevention engine.

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