Get the Compliance Help You Need! New Regulations Permit Payments to Lawyers.

In an effort to improve compliance with export laws, the United States will issue a new regulation that permits certain non-US payments to lawyers when you are seeking advice about export law compliance.

More to the point, the new regulation will permit payments that would have been otherwise blocked by the Treasury Department’s Weapons of Mass Destruction rules (blocked pursuant to 31 C.F.R. § 544.201(a)). This is consistent with other exceptions that appear in other parts of the regulations for legal services payments.

The new rule authorizes the provision of legal services, and it also authorizes the payment for the legal services. Although no license is required, the services subject to this provision must be reported annually to the Treasury Department. 31 C.F.R. § 544.508(b).

This generally applies to payments that come from outside of the United States. It helps to ensure that non-US companies that want to comply with U.S. export laws can get competent advice about compliance.

The new regulation is expected to go into effect when it gets published in the Federal Register. This is expected to happen tomorrow, February 15th.