3 ms·

I’m curious, what is the legal process for dealing with manufactured privilege?

by omginternets 4y ago

shadowgovt 4y ago
What is manufactured privilege?
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  Communications with your lawyer are privileged. Communications with other people are not (necessarily) privileged. By looping in the lawyer it creates a pretext (that probably won't hold up) for claiming it is privileged communication.
  - gopher_space 4y ago
    Interesting. I just went to a meeting where my presence meant there could be no privileged communication even though the lawyer's client was also my client and they had requested my attendance.
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      Right. From the Ars article it seemed that it was Google employees looping in Google lawyers while communicating with each other, not Google employees looping in the lawyers while also talking with third parties. So more like if I and a colleague both go to legal to hold a conversation just to gain the benefit of their presence to call it privileged. But if the lawyer is just sitting there working through a book of sudoku puzzles, then it's probably not really a valid claim of privilege. From the Ars article: > In 2016, Google instructed employees to create artificial indicia of privilege for all written communications related to revenue-share agreements and Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs), the exclusionary agreements at the heart of this action. Google reiterated those instructions after the Department of Justice issued its first Civil Investigative Demand in the investigation preceding this case. The Court should, therefore, sanction Google for its deliberate and deceptive misuse of the attorney-client privilege and order the company to produce, unredacted, all emails between non-attorneys where included in-house counsel did not bother to reply, indicating that any request for legal advice was most likely a pretext.
      - riku_iki 4y ago
        so, did court sanction google for misuse of privilege?
lesuorac 4y ago
The court can appoint somebody to verify that the documents in question actually deserve privilege. Ex. Mar-a largo documents [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master#The_Mar-a-Lago_Documents_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master#The_Mar-a-Lago_...

I’m curious, what is the legal process for dealing with manufactured privilege?

shadowgovt 4y ago

What is manufactured privilege?

Jtsummers 4y ago
Communications with your lawyer are privileged. Communications with other people are not (necessarily) privileged. By looping in the lawyer it creates a pretext (that probably won't hold up) for claiming it is privileged communication.
- gopher_space 4y ago
  Interesting. I just went to a meeting where my presence meant there could be no privileged communication even though the lawyer's client was also my client and they had requested my attendance.
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    Right. From the Ars article it seemed that it was Google employees looping in Google lawyers while communicating with each other, not Google employees looping in the lawyers while also talking with third parties. So more like if I and a colleague both go to legal to hold a conversation just to gain the benefit of their presence to call it privileged. But if the lawyer is just sitting there working through a book of sudoku puzzles, then it's probably not really a valid claim of privilege. From the Ars article: > In 2016, Google instructed employees to create artificial indicia of privilege for all written communications related to revenue-share agreements and Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs), the exclusionary agreements at the heart of this action. Google reiterated those instructions after the Department of Justice issued its first Civil Investigative Demand in the investigation preceding this case. The Court should, therefore, sanction Google for its deliberate and deceptive misuse of the attorney-client privilege and order the company to produce, unredacted, all emails between non-attorneys where included in-house counsel did not bother to reply, indicating that any request for legal advice was most likely a pretext.
    - riku_iki 4y ago
      so, did court sanction google for misuse of privilege?

lesuorac 4y ago

The court can appoint somebody to verify that the documents in question actually deserve privilege. Ex. Mar-a largo documents [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master#The_Mar-a-Lago_Documents_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master#The_Mar-a-Lago_...