Legal Professional Privilege
Legal professional privilege (sometimes called client legal privilege) is a rule of law that is designed to protect the confidentiality of communications between lawyers and their clients made for the dominant purpose of obtaining or giving legal advice or in connection with existing or anticipated legal proceedings.
Legal professional privilege is a very important tool that clients and lawyers can communicate candidly with one another.
However, the protection is not absolute and can be taken to have been waived or lost if some precautions are not taken. It is not simply enough to mark a document "privileged" or "confidential". Particular care needs to be taken with email communications.
Legal professional privilege can be claimed for communications between OULC lawyers and University employees and officers seeking legal advice on behalf of the University.
To minimise the risk of challenge, we recommend you always take these precautions:
- Any requests for legal advice should be in writing and marked confidential;
- Any communications should only be sent or copied to people within the University who are directly involved in the issue which is the subject of legal advice;
- These communications should NEVER be sent or copied to anyone outside the University;
- Any legal advice should not be copied into, or summarised or commented on, in other documents (such as minutes of meetings, memoranda and so on). Instead, the advice should be attached separately.
Please contact OULC if you have any questions or concerns about legal professional privilege.
