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Reply to "Any lawyers on? When you’re emailing or messaging with other lawyers, do you ever discuss potentially sensitive issues?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That junior lawyer was probably at a firm that told her to follow that protocol. Of COURSE we discuss sensitive things! The only thing we don't do is send a link to documents on a shared drive and in the same email send the password. The password is sent in a second, separate email. But yes, TONS of legal info is sent back and forth via email. [/quote]

This discussion may be driven by semantics.  I'm the PP who was in house for ~15 years.  And I definitely don't believe that all legal discussions need to be via phone call only.  To the contrary, there can be a lot of value in email communications that document proper evaluation of legal issues.  But as an outside counsel once wrote to me: "if the answer to this is easy, just respond to this email. If the answer is more complicated, let's set up a call."

As for the person noting the distinction between a) emails between two in house attorneys and b) emails between an in house attorney and a business leader - remember the "many hats" aspect of being in house counsel. In house counsel play both a legal role and a business role, and the privilege only attaches if the discussions were legal in nature.  Whether an email covers legal or business topics (or both) can be muddy and subject to interpretation.

I do wonder if some of the different opinions here are due to differing amounts of experience.  The longer you've been practicing, the more opportunity you've had to see a really bad email that was assumed to be privileged produced or otherwise exposed.[/quote]

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