A client has the privilege to refuse to reveal and to preclude any other party from revealing sensitive correspondence made to promote the provision of competent legal services to the client that have been made:
(1) between the victim or the representative of the client and the client’s lawyer or the representative of the lawyer;
(2) between the advocate of the client and the agent of the counsel;
(3) between clients, their representatives, their attorneys, or the representatives of their lawyers, in some of matters of general concern, but not including interactions exclusively between clients or their representatives where no lawyer is a party to the communication;
(4) between the client’s representatives, or between the client’s representative and the client’s representative, or between the client’s representative and the client’s representative;
(5) between lawyers defending the same client and their members.
Who is entitled to assert the right?
The right may be asserted by the client or for the client, whether in life or not, by the counsel of the client, the guardian or conservator, or the personal representative of a deceased client, or the heir, trustee, or equivalent representative of a business, association, or other entity. The person who was the lawyer or the lawyer’s agent may claim the right at the time of the contact, but only on behalf of the client. In the absence of proof to the contrary, the right of the prosecutor or lawyer’s agent to do so is assumed.
Exceptions
No right to attorney-client privilege exists in following cases:
(1) Progressing violence or fraud. Where the lawyer’s services were requested or received to encourage or support someone to conduct or intend to commit what the attorney knows or should have fairly understood to be a crime or fraud;
(2) Claimants through the same client who is dead. Regardless of whether the claims are through testate or intestate inheritance or inter vivos transaction, involving a contact related to a problem between parties that argue by the same deceased client;
(3) Violation of duties by an advocate or client. As to a contact related to a problem of violation of duty by the prosecutor to the client of the lawyer or by the client to the lawyer of the client;
(4) A paper approved by a attorney. As to a correspondence applicable to a matter pertaining to an attested record to which the solicitor is a witness attesting;
(5) Conjoint consumers. Concerning a communication relevant to a matter of mutual interest with or from two or more clients where the correspondence has been rendered by either of them to a widely retained or consulted lawyer when proposed in a case between or against either of the clients.
(6) Actions with owners. As regards the contact between a firm and its counsel or a lawyer’s agent that has not been rendered for the purpose of promoting the provision of competent legal services to the company during the lawsuit, and as regards the litigation under which the right is asserted:
– a shareholder’s action against a company based on a violation of a fiduciary duty; or an action against a corporation based on an infringement of a fiduciary duty; or
– in a derivative case on behalf of the company by the shareholder, given that the disclosure of confidential correspondence is necessary only if the party seeking the right to report demonstrates reasonable cause for disclosure and further requires that the court may use it for camera review or for oral evaluation and may issue protective orders.