Sonya Strnad

Sonya Strnad is a senior counsel in Holland & Knight's Miami office. She practices in the firm's Litigation Section and has experience in both federal and state courts, regulatory investigations, congressional investigations and internal investigations. Her practice encompasses internal and government investigations involving possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), anti-money laundering, fraud, embezzlement, as well as securities class actions, federal securities fraud and derivatives litigation. Ms. Strnad has experience in working with clients in diverse industries, such as oil & gas, healthcare, telecommunications, finance and banking, media, and construction, among others. 

Ms. Strnad's FCPA experience includes eleven major internal investigations, participation in a three year monitorship, review of compliance programs and training, third party due diligence, merger/acquisition due diligence and corporate guidance. For the monitorship, she was part of the team appointed by the DOJ for a major enforcement case. Ms. Strnad developed the team's three annual work plans and conducted site visits, during which more than 200 employees in 15 countries were interviewed. As part of the review, she assessed the company's enterprise risk management program, its third-party due diligence program, 'Know Your Customer' reviews and company anticorruption training. Afterwards, Ms. Strnad developed recommendations for improvements to the company's compliance program and drafted the annual reviews submitted to DOJ.

Ms. Strnad is a Certified E-Discovery Specialist. She is a member of the Sedona Working Groups on Electronic Document Retention and Production (WG1) and International Electronic Information Management, Discovery and Disclosure (WG6), as well as the firm's National Electronic Data Discovery Team. She has extensive experience in the e-discovery, forensic and document retention areas and frequently lectures on these topics for businesses, Continuing Legal Education classes and internally within the firm.

Ms. Strnad also counsels clients on document management practices outside of litigation. She has worked with a number of clients to develop document management and retention policies and guidelines, provide general retention schedules and implement litigation hold procedures.

Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Strnad was in the New York office of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, where she represented both corporations and individuals in complex litigation involving antitrust, corporate, commercial and securities matters. Notably, she was involved in the Enron litigation, in which she tackled complex electronic discovery issues.

While in law school, Ms. Strnad was the president of the Francis Deak International Law Society and chair of the Symposium on Corporate Multinationalism and Human Rights, which examined domestic corporate liability for human rights violations of multinational companies abroad. She was also a member of the pro bono domestic abuse program with Camden County Family Court and founded the first pro bono immigration program, helping permanent residents to naturalize.