They’ve changed the law in relation to legal professional privilege on us. The common law has been abolished, at least in relation to compulsory processes (discovery, subpoenas, interrogatories, notice to produce) in fora where the new Evidence Act, 2008 applies, and the adduction of evidence in those fora. Two legal professional privilege regimes are now [...]

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Update, 19 August 2009: See now also Gray v BNY Trust Company of Australia Limited (formerly Guardian Trust Australia Limited) [2009] NSWSC 789.
Original post: In the last post, I mentioned that the claimant beneficiary was not allowed to see the solicitor’s file, despite having initiated a costs dispute with the executor’s solicitor. A recent decision [...]

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Here is the latest case about that form of implied waiver of legal professional privilege by a former client plaintiff who sues his former solicitors for negligence: Artistic Builders Pty Ltd v Nash [2009] NSWSC 102.  In this case, the plaintiff sued two successive sets of lawyers in the one proceeding. Inspection was granted of [...]

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Lawyers Weekly has an article by some folk at Allens noting Justice Branson’s decision in Rich v Harrington [2007] FCA 1987, a mega anti-discrimination suit brought by Christina Rich, a former partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia against the other partners. There are so many privilege cases which come out, it’s hard to know which ones to [...]

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If I recall correctly, one of my first contested hearings as a young solicitor was about whether the claim for privilege over a loss adjuster’s report in an affidavit of documents drafted by me was kosher.  I went on to write an article on the subject in that august journal, the newsletter of Women in [...]

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Even though legal professional privilege, duties of confidentiality, and other evidentiary privileges are something I try to keep up with, and though I have just advised a litigation funder on the subject, I would be challenged by an urgent brief to argue the privilege of a communication between in-house counsel and a staff member [...]

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Here’s a weird old privilege case: Sugden v Sugden [2007] NSWCA 312. A minor from Orange in rural NSW suffered bad injuries in a car crash while she was driving. She was on L plates and her father was supervising. Since she was all banged up and in the Royal North [...]

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Here’s the state of the law in the US on the vexed issue of whether companies can assert legal professional privilege (aka client legal privilege) for the advice of employed lawyers (aka in-house counsel).  It discusses the case of In re Vioxx Prods. Liab. Litig., 501 F.Supp.2d 789 (E.D. La. 2007)

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I was already a fan of the first edition of Judge Stephen Walmsley SC, Alister Abadee, and Ben Zipser’s excellent Professional Liability in Australia, published by Thomson, and had been waiting for the new edition with interest. I got myself a copy the other day. It’s good, and there are substantial additions since [...]

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These propositions from Z v New South Wales Crime Commission [2007] HCA 7 may be useful in relation to matters more generally than for understanding the basis of the Court’s decision:

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