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Business Organizations Law

Georgetown University Law Center

Attorney-client privilege

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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Last Straw: The Department Of Justice's Privilege Waiver Policy And The Death Of Adversarial Justice In Criminal Investigations Of Corporations, Julie R. O'Sullivan Jan 2008

The Last Straw: The Department Of Justice's Privilege Waiver Policy And The Death Of Adversarial Justice In Criminal Investigations Of Corporations, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The white-collar criminal defense bar has never been reticent to complain about U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policies that threaten its clients or the viability of its practice. But nothing--at least in the author's twenty-plus years of involvement in white-collar issues--has consumed the bar as much as the threats posed to the corporate attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine. While commentators have identified a variety of assaults on these protections, the bar is most vocally outraged by the DOJ policy, pursuant to which, it charges, federal prosecutors regularly insist that corporations waive these protections to secure cooperation credit, declination of criminal …


The Story Of Upjohn Co. V. United States: One Man's Journey To Extend Lawyer-Client Confidentiality, And The Social Forces That Affected It, Paul F. Rothstein Jan 2006

The Story Of Upjohn Co. V. United States: One Man's Journey To Extend Lawyer-Client Confidentiality, And The Social Forces That Affected It, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The attorney-client privilege protects information a client provides an attorney in confidence for the purpose of securing legal advice. But suppose the client is not a person but a corporation and can only speak through its agents and employees. What then are the contours of the privilege? If the corporation's attorney asks an employee for information relating to pending litigation or other legal matters, is the conversation privileged? Some courts said that no communications to a corporate attorney were privileged unless they came from members of the corporate control group, loosely those people who had authority to direct the attorney's …


On Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Brief Of The Federal Bar Association As Amicus Curiae, The Upjohn Company, Et Al. V. United States Of America, Et Al., Thomas G. Lilly, Alfred F. Belcuore, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald L. Carlson Jan 1979

On Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Sixth Circuit, Brief Of The Federal Bar Association As Amicus Curiae, The Upjohn Company, Et Al. V. United States Of America, Et Al., Thomas G. Lilly, Alfred F. Belcuore, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald L. Carlson

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

This case presents the question of whether communications between employees of a corporation and an attorney representing that corporation are entitled to the full protections of the attorney-client privilege only when the employees are those responsible for deciding and directing the corporation's response to the attorney's legal advice.