The Justice Department is coming under intense pressure to soften some of the tactics it embraced in the early half of the decade, when a spate of corporate fraud put the conviction of white collar criminals at the top of the Bush administration's law enforcement agenda.

The department's tough policy has been a sore point for legal experts and business lobbyists, who say it has unlawfully forced companies and individuals to forgo due process rights to avoid indictments against a whole company.