Evidence Code 956.5 EC – Exception [to the lawyer-client privilege]: Prevention of criminal act likely to result in death or substantial bodily harm.
An e-mail from your attorney is privileged, but once you forward it to anyone not covered by the privilege, the e-mail is no longer a confidential communication. Inadvertent waiver is particularly a risk with e-mail software containing an auto-text feature that automatically completes e-mail addresses.
Emailed correspondence between attorney and client is privileged. However, the client can take some actions which will waive this attorney client privilege.
v. Meredith,5 adopted the theory of “selective waiver” of the attorney-client privilege. This theory provides that a party's voluntary disclosure of privileged materials to the government — typically as part of an effort to cooperate with an investigation — does not waive the privilege as to other third parties.
You may be challenged in sustaining the privilege if you simply copy your attorney on your various emails without asking for official legal advice. Instead, to sustain the privilege, a judge will generally want to see that you reached out to your attorney for a legal opinion and recommendation.
An email or letter from you to a qualified lawyer (barrister or solicitor) asking for advice, and the written legal advice you receive, are examples of documents which are privileged.
Many judges caution that an employee who merely copies an in-house attorney on an email to a non-lawyer colleague does not automatically render the email privileged. Courts scrutinize the putatively privileged communication to determine whether its primary purpose was to secure or dispense legal advice.
Non-Privileged Records . Means documents and records, whether hard copy or electronic, which are not subject to any legal privilege preventing its discovery and/or disclosure in a legal proceeding.
Only communications between a lawyer and a client will be protected by legal advice privilege. This does not mean that all communications which the lawyer has with any of the employees at the corporate client will necessarily be privileged.
An evidentiary rule or common law doctrine under which a party's disclosure of privileged or work product-protected communications or information removes the attorney-client privilege or work product protection for related, but undisclosed, communications or information.
The privilege shields from discovery advice given by the attorney to the client as well as communications from the client to the attorney. Voluntary disclosure of privileged communications to a third party results in waiver of the attorney-client privilege unless an exception applies.
To fall within the attorney-client privilege, the communication must be:Made between a client and a lawyer,In confidence,During the course of the attorney-client relationship, and.The communication must be made with the attorney in his or her professional (legal) capacity.