Training is not privileged, for the same reason CC’ng an entire department will cause one to lose privilege on a conversation.
There are parties privy to the conversation (which the parties are aware are party to the conversation) that aren’t even remotely plausibly trying to get legal advice, or part of the matter being advised on in any direct way.
Trainings aren’t seeking legal advice.
Being a random employee reading email isn’t seeking legal advice.
The larger the group, the less plausible any argument gets for this reason. There is no way a lawyer is having a conversation or giving legal advice (actual advice) to 100 people at once. Even 10 is highly improbable.
If all parties to the conversation can’t even plausibly claim it’s a private conversation with their lawyer to seek legal advice, then the courts aren’t going to even think of taking a privilege claim seriously.
Even if they can it can still be pierced if there is evidence privilege was used to commit crimes, further a conspiracy, etc.
“[T]raining materials prepared by in-house counsel to advise employees on the law applicable to their jobs are entitled to [attorney-client] protection because they provide legal advice.”
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/rhode-i...
It wasn’t a class given widely, it wasn’t broad or generic, it wasn’t given unsolicited, etc.
Point taken though, and thanks for the cite!
It was a training given widely, and online. It was arguably broad and generic. It was given unsolicited (unless you count every training an employee is told to do as unsolicited).
The fact that you misunderstand the entire factual and procedural posture of this opinion should key you in to how out of your depth you are. Every discovery fight is a special edge case, that’s why I said corporate privilege is hard in theory and even harder in practice.
“Joey said that we can kill the competition with this new feature, is that going to be a problem for us from an antitrust perspective?”
Privileged: whether or not that is going to be a problem from an antitrust perspective
Non-privileged: Joey said that we can kill the competition with this new feature
The number of people is irrelevant except as a gauge for whether or not legal advice is actually being provided. If you were to cc an entire department on an email to your counsel with the above question it wouldn’t change the analysis. Recall that in the corporate context the corporation is the client and employees are the corporation’s agents. Whether 1 or 100 employees, it’s the same corporation.
What should be the “correct” answer legally is that, if the lawyer is providing the training, it should be privileged regardless of how often it occurs or how many people are trained. The potential catch here is that you can’t use privilege to protect conversations where you’re telling people how to commit a crime, and teaching hundreds of people how not to lose antitrust buzzword bingo starts to look suspiciously like telling (or even helping) your client (the corporation) how to get away with a crime.