If the government’s search of corporate offices and seizure of company records produce anxiety, then the seizure of emails from the in-house lawyer’s office triggers outright panic. That is what apparently happened when the FBI, while investigating potential money laundering…
Continue Reading “Not Even Close”! 11th Circuit Approves DOJ Filter-Team Protocol for Review of In-House Lawyer’s Emails

Oh, the privilege land mines that often accompany an in-house lawyer’s legal advice. When an in-house lawyer’s putatively privileged communications landed in a business document, the question arose whether the company waived the privilege. To win the issue, the in-house…
Continue Reading In-House Lawyer Quandary: Business Advice or Implementation of Legal Advice as Part of a Business Decision?

In-house lawyers often wish to shoulder more corporate responsibility, including doubling their legal-counsel role with business-related jobs and titles. And with time an increasingly precious resource, many of wish for efficiency and double-up their communications with business advice and legal…
Continue Reading Double Trouble for In-House Counsel LLP

It appears that lawyers are increasingly taking their deposition grievances to the trial judge, including grumbles about defending lawyers’ privilege objections.  And another trial judge has responded with criticism of an attorney’s “improper and overuse” of privilege objections that thwarted…
Continue Reading Sanctions Imposed for Lawyer’s “Repeated, Improper” Privilege Objections

The attorney–client privilege protects from compelled disclosure communications between a client and its lawyer, but not facts. Forty years ago, Justice Rehnquist told us that, for privilege purposes, “a fact is one thing and a communication concerning that fact is…
Continue Reading Courts Duel Over Privilege Protection for Email Attachments

While there is no federal common-law peer-review privilege, there is a peer-review privilege under the federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act and two subsections of the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987. The nursing-home peer-review privilege receives relatively little review,…
Continue Reading Nursing Home Peer-Review Privilege Protects Outside Consultant’s Reports, Court Rules

The great legal debate continues. You know, whether Chicago’s deep-dish or New York’s thin-crust is the preferred pizza recipe. But a different recipe—with foreign subpoena, interstate deposition act, and conflict-of-laws ingredients— commenced another debate: whether Illinois’ or New York’s privilege…
Continue Reading Deep Dish! Illinois Court Rejects New York Privilege Law in Interstate Subpoena Scuffle