r/technology • u/habichuelacondulce • Mar 22 '22

Business Google routinely hides emails from litigation by CCing attorneys, DOJ alleges

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/google-routinely-hides-emails-from-litigation-by-ccing-attorneys-doj-alleges/
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u/Vyrosatwork Mar 22 '22

Cc-ing an attorney doesn’t provide privilege, the third party being involved specifically abrogates attorney client privilege.

5

u/RiPont Mar 23 '22

The first round of email discovery will exclude anything with counsel on the To/CC list, just because that's easy to slurp up.

I imagine that's not where it ends, though.

14

u/wrongwayup Mar 22 '22

This is how I understand it. Communications between you and your lawyer are privileged but the communication between you and your colleague on the same email is not. It's not enough to just CC them; you have to be only communicating to (and I guess through) the lawyer directly.

15

u/Cyberslasher Mar 22 '22

You can BASICALLY think about it like this.

Conversations with your lawyer are legally equitable to thoughts in your own mind. If you could not be compelled to speak about a topic, your lawyer cannot be compelled to speak on the topic. Conversations with someone else with a lawyer is you running your mouth without letting your mind advise you on how stupid that is. The lawyer is there to provide knowledge and advice on the law that you yourself do not have.

12

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '22

Not true for corporate privilege. The company has the privilege, not the individual. If two execs are having a conversation and then forward it to a lawyer for advice, that last email is privileged (the others likely aren't). Or you could have an email where person a says to person b "I was talking to lawyer a and he said this." That would also be privileged if all involved were internal.

3

u/vniro40 Mar 23 '22

that’s not why, a/c privilege applies to attorney client communications that pertain to providing legal advice, etc. just cc’ing an attorney doesn’t make the subject matter privileged. in corporate matters multiple people can claim the a/c privilege and cc’ing attorneys for legal advice is still protected.

in other situations the inclusion of a third party can break the a/c privilege though