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Comment by Paul-Craft | Hacker News Reader

This is just Google up to their old tricks again. They used to have an internal practice to add company lawyers to emails in order to try and make them privileged and undiscoverable: https://archive.is/1Bwgs

I don't know what the aftermath of the DoJ action mentioned in the link was, but I hope they were sanctioned in some way for it, just like I hope they get sanctioned for what they're trying to do here.

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There was a recent supreme court case where they discussed this exact practice:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-1397

From listening to the oral arguments, the court didn't seem to think that just CC'ing a lawyer automatically made the full communication privileged.

Yup, as per my note in another thread this does not work and it's pretty dumb to think it will work. Privilege covers you providing facts so they can give advice and them giving advice. It doesn't cover anything else and adding a lawyer to a thread like that is just sketchy and looks evasive.

“If simply having a lawyer present made a conversation privileged, then every mobster would pay one to follow them everywhere and sit in the corner of the room.” ~ Opening Arguments

I get the idea that if Google was delivering drugs to someone they would start off the conversation: "Are you a cop? Cause you have to tell me if you are!"

You should be a bit wary of reading oral arguments as definitive, because the judges have a history of applying the more aggressive questioning to the side they ultimately agree with, just to make sure it's solid.

https://www.stroock.com/news-and-insights/u-s-supreme-court-... provides some more context - and speculates as to why the court declined to take the opportunity to definitively establish a standard here. It seems to still be an open question what the standard is!

At that point I’d be arguing it’s a criminal conspiracy involving the lawyer so anything with that lawyer no longer has privileges due to being evidence of crime

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