PRIVACY NOTICE: This email and all attachments hereto are intended for the use of the recipient(s) mentioned herein only and may contain confidential information, legally protected information and results of work between lawyer and client. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, we hereby inform you that any distribution, distribution or reproduction of this email and any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please inform the sender by e-mail, telephone or fax and permanently delete the original and all e-mails and printouts thereof. Thank you very much. IRS CIRCULAR 230 NOTE: In accordance with IRS requirements, we inform you that all U.S. The tax advice contained in this announcement (or any schedule) is not intended or written and may not be used to (a) avoid penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (b) promote, market or recommend to any other party any transaction or matter discussed in this announcement (or any schedule). Editor and author Angeline Rodriguez questions the recent ubiquity of privilege warnings from the reader`s perspective. “A reading experience doesn`t always have to be enjoyable, but it does have to be consistent,” she says. Warnings of privilege can really break that consistency and put the author in a defensive position, and maybe there`s a way to do it right, but I haven`t seen it.
If your acknowledgment of privilege isn`t already engraved in what you say, then I don`t know if it`s beneficial for the reader to pin it down to fend off criticism on Twitter or what you have. Let`s say Sally Smith doesn`t call in her own name, but on behalf of her company, ABC Company (ABC). Smith is ABC`s president or chief financial officer and discusses with Jones, the lawyer, ABC`s possible tax risk or liability. Since Smith is the president of the company, the privilege clearly extends to this communication. However, if the call was made by Jane Edwards, the director of accounting, the answer becomes less clear. Based on the current trend of the courts, Edwards` conversations with the lawyer are preferred as long as the issues she discusses with the lawyer are directly related to her responsibilities within the company. Solicitor-client privilege is the oldest privilege recognized by Anglo-American jurisprudence. In fact, the principles of the privilege of testimony date back to the Roman Republic, and its use was already firmly entrenched in English law during the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century. Based on the concept of honour, privilege precluded any testimony by counsel against the client.1 Death of a client.
The privilege may be violated in the event of the death of a testator-client in the event of a dispute between the heirs, legatees or other parties of the deceased who claim the deceased client. However, a client cannot protect certain facts from disclosure simply by communicating them to her lawyer. If information can be collected from a source other than privileged communications, then the underlying information itself is not privileged.21 In other words, solicitor-client privilege protects “communications made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice; It does not protect the information transmitted. 22 Clients and lawyers should be aware of this important fact: simply passing something on to a lawyer will not prevent the underlying facts from being forced to be disclosed if they can be discovered from a non-privileged source.23 With the development of privilege, countless political justifications have played a role in its development. Basically, privilege ensures “that a person who seeks advice or assistance from a lawyer should be completely free from fear that his secrets will be revealed.” 2 The underlying principle of the privilege is therefore to provide “sound legal advice [and] advocacy services”. 3 With security of privilege, the client can speak openly and openly with a lawyer, pass on all relevant information to the lawyer, and create a “privacy zone.” 4 In other words, protected by privilege, the client may be more willing to communicate in order to offer advice that might otherwise be removed. In theory, such openness and honesty will help the lawyer provide more accurate and well-reasoned professional advice, and the client can be assured that his or her statements to his or her lawyer will not be interpreted as an adverse admission or used against his or her interests.5 Indeed, fully informed legal counsel are better equipped to “discharge all their professional responsibilities, to discharge their duties of good faith and loyalty to the client and to contribute to the effective administration of justice. 6 Solicitor-client privilege is complicated by a multi-purpose email or memo. For example, if the email is sent to the lawyer and someone else is copied, the lawyer`s protection may not apply. In other cases, lawyers may offer non-legal advice such as technical or scientific information. It can also affect the lawyer`s protection. Rule 1: Send notices to your lawyer.
This may be your in-house lawyer or outside legal counsel, but for solicitor-client privilege to take effect, it must be addressed to a lawyer who provides legal advice. Privilege does not protect communications between employees when no lawyer is present. In other words, you can`t email your non-lawyer boss and mark it as “privileged and confidential,” because without a lawyer on the recipient side to provide legal analysis and advice, there is no mechanism to protect communications from legal disclosure.