Chapter 4 Client Relationships

• Library: A Virginia-Specific Summary Guide: Attorney-Client Privilege & Work Product Doctrine (Virginia CLE) (2016 Ed.)

Chapter 4

CLIENT relationships

4.1 INTRODUCTION

The privilege can protect communications between lawyers and prospective, individual, governmental, and institutional clients.

4.2 PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS

In some circumstances prospective clients can claim privilege protection for their communications with lawyers they do not ultimately retain. [4.201]

Under the majority rule, the privilege protects communications with prospective clients who engage in confidential communications with lawyers who have invited such communications and who explicitly or implicitly agree to keep them confidential even if the prospective clients did not retain the lawyers. [4.202]

VA A Virginia circuit court ¹ inexplicably held that the privilege did not protect communications between a potential client and a legal aid intake paralegal.

In addressing the parallel ethics duty of confidentiality, and thus presumably also applying to privilege protection, the ABA Model Rules and most states' ethics rules do not protect unsolicited electronic or other communications to lawyers. ² [4.203]

4.3 INDIVIDUAL CLIENTS

Individual clients obviously can enjoy privilege protection for their communications in the proper circumstances. [4.301]

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Courts generally recognize that the privilege protection extends beyond the attorney-client privilege relationship...