Privilege
***PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT***
On the subject of legal advice privilege — or for that matter litigation privilege attaching to communications to or from your internal legal team:
There is none, now that Serious Fraud Office v Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation is a thing. Andrews J’s High Court judgment in Serious Fraud Office v Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation has been overruled... more to follow.
OK this is possibly overstretching it. But:
- General Legal advice privilege covers only communications actually between you and your solicitor (you being that part of your corporate organisation given over to doing things like speaking to lawyers), and not communications between your employees in the process of preparing to communicate with said solicitor (See the Three Rivers case); and
- Litigation privilege is a more powerful, deeper magic, but it must be sent with the sole or dominant purpose of preparing for contemplated litigation, and litigation doesn’t include regulatory investigations, commissions of enquiry or the proceedings of a regulator.