I got a call from a lawyer the other day. A colleague had been served with a search warrant for a client’s file. It appeared that the focus of the investigation may have been related to claims of fraud. When the lawyer objected that the file would necessarily contain communications between client and lawyer, the answer he received was that a lawyer working with/for the police “would review the file.” Oh, OK, I guess that solves the problem. Or maybe not.
I was thinking of this cavalier attitude towards the issues of confidentiality and privilege when I read that the National Security Agency or one of its cooperating partners had listened in on private attorney-client communications between a law firm and a foreign client.
