Legal Professional Privilege in Corporate Criminal Investigations: challenges and solutions in the modern age

Stockdale, Michael and Mitchell, Rebecca (2018) Legal Professional Privilege in Corporate Criminal Investigations: challenges and solutions in the modern age. The Journal of Criminal Law, 82 (4). pp. 321-337. ISSN 0022-0183

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022018318779834

Abstract

This article considers two areas that arise in the context of corporate criminal investigations relating to claims of legal professional privilege: the extent to which litigation privilege may attach to communications made in the context of such investigations; and the difficulty of identifying the client for the purposes of legal advice privilege. These issues are of particular significance where a company is or may be the subject of an investigation by specialist prosecuting authorities, such as the Serious Fraud Office. We identify the policy considerations justifying litigation privilege and whether they continue to explain the current ambit of the privilege. With particular reference to the extent to which the privilege is capable of attaching to communications made for the purpose of working towards a potential settlement, we consider how the constraints upon its ambit operate in the context of corporate criminal investigations. In relation to legal advice privilege, we demonstrate that it is possible to give a coherent explanation of the jurisprudence in this area which, whilst accepting that decisions are fact-specific, should enable corporations and the courts to identify the client within the corporation with a greater degree of confidence.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: legal professional privilege, legal advice privilege, litigation privilege, corporate criminal investigations
Subjects: M200 Law by Topic
Department: Faculties > Business and Law > Northumbria Law School
Depositing User: Paul Burns
Date Deposited: 09 May 2018 15:34
Last Modified: 11 Oct 2019 19:15
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/34216

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