Christoph Knauer

The founding partner Professor Dr. Christoph Knauer is responsible for the areas of corporate criminal law, commercial criminal law, tax criminal law, and medical criminal law, as well as criminal appeals and constitutional complaints.

He has many years of experience in all areas of criminal law and criminal procedure law; his litigation experience in particular also covers proceedings before the German Federal Court of Justice and the German Federal Constitutional Court.

Prof. Dr. Knauer advises and defends national and international companies and their managers in all areas of commercial criminal law and criminal tax law, in fine proceedings, and in connection with the criminal law aspects of internal investigations, compliance, and corporate bodies’ decisions under corporate law. Because of his experience in handling crisis situations, he is also regularly called in to advise management and supervisory boards with respect to high-risk decisions against the background of the business judgement rule.

He defends both executives of international companies and managing directors of small and medium-sized enterprises. He provides advice to medical practitioners and hospitals in criminal investigation proceedings and in the avoidance of risks under criminal law.

Fellow lawyers regularly recommend him for appeals and constitutional complaints.

Prof. Dr. Knauer works as defence counsel throughout Germany and as advisor across Europe and in the United States of America.

In March 2015, he was appointed Honorary Professor for the areas of commercial criminal law and criminal appeals at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich; and he is also an examiner in the First State Law Examination. He frequently holds lectures and has authored numerous publications, with special academic focus on criminal procedure law and commercial and corporate criminal law. Among other things, he is a co-publisher of the Munich Commentary on the German Code of Criminal Procedure and the Munich Defence Counsel Handbook, and a co-publisher and editor of the criminal law journal “Neue Zeitschrift für Strafrecht” (NStZ).

He has served as chairman of the board of the Munich Legal Society (Münchener Juristische Gesellschaft, MJG) since 2019 and, since 2020, he has also chaired the Criminal Procedure Committee and been a member of the Rule of Law Working Group of the German Federal Bar Association (Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer, BRAK). He has been a member of the board of the Munich Bar Association since June 2022 and vice-president of this organisation since December 2022.

He studied law at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, until 1995. After his First State Law Examination, he worked as an assistant to Prof Dr. Claus Roxin at the Institute for Penology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität from 1995 to 2000. Since then, he has been a lecturer for criminal law and criminal procedure. In 2000, he obtained his PhD with a doctoral thesis on collegial decisions in corporate bodies (including management boards). In 2002, he passed the Second State Law Examination. Initially, he held senior positions at the legal publishing houses C.H. Beck and Wolters Kluwer Deutschland GmbH. Concurrently, he was engaged as of counsel defence attorney in various law firms, with special emphasis on criminal appeals proceedings.

From 2009 until 2022, Prof. Dr. Knauer was partner at the Munich law firm named Ufer Knauer Rechtsanwälte at the time. After his entry, this law firm evolved into one of Germany’s leading commercial criminal law specialists.

In 2023, he joined forces with Sören Schomburg and Dr. Björn Boerger to found the law firm Knauer Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten mbB.