So,if you are being abused by your boss via email, you can't give the evidence to a lawyer, but first have to apply for a court order without showing any evidence in order to get the evidence? I think this is unlikely to be the law, and if it is, it shouldn't be.

Different jurisdictions have different rules. But legal counsel is a common exception to NDAs.

IANAL, but that's what "discovery" is for.

But without solid evidence of some sort, one cannot establish that there is a case fit to be heard in court, and so there will be no discovery. It is a bootstrapping problem.

Witness testimony is evidence.

I've never heard of discovery being applied to ones own communication.

Your word is evidence, then they can use that to look for more evidence including checking emails.

Well, that's true. But you're still having to give your employer notice that you are talking to a lawyer before the lawyer has seen anything. This seems seriously unfair, and I hope that NDAs are not enforceable under such circumstances.

[edited to add ] Also it seems like it would be a big waste of the courts time.

From both a practical and ethical point of view, I find it more than acceptable to retain copies of email correspondence one is participating in, and to share that correspondence with one's legal representation. The alternative puts too much power in corporate hands.

I can understand maybe showing an email or several perhaps to a lawyer, a court might well consider that reasonable even if it's a technical violation, or just give a warning. It's a matter of proportionality. Breaking a speed limit by a few mph won't get you banned from driving. This is completely different though, it was an automated query trawling and exfiltrating vast quantities of mail threads.

An unidentified source alleged she used a script to find messages. That doesn't mean she copied the messages without reviewing them.[1]

[1] https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-is-investigating-the-acti...

All of which she was already involved in. It’s not like she didn’t have the info already.

That's not the point. Exfiltrating the data means it's available to non-employees (and it appears she did send it to non-employees which is by itself a clear and prosecutable violation), is not protected by the company's security and privacy policies, and would still be available to her beyond her period of employment. She's not entitled to do any of those things, especially since as you say she had access to the info as an employee anyway so she had no legitimate excuse.

Yes. Any policy preventing that should be illegal.

Legal counsel is a common exception to NDAs. Different jurisdictions have different specific rules.