Maintaining privilege

Legal professional privilege enables a client to keep both what it says to its lawyer and the advice it receives from its lawyer confidential. The steps below suggest how that confidentiality can be maintained when drafting statements of case, witness statements and the like:

• Be careful how you draft witness statements and similar documents. Sloppy drafting could lead to unnecessary and costly arguments on waiver of privilege.
• In the relatively rare circumstances when an otherwise privileged document does have to be mentioned, do so on the basis that privilege is not thereby being waived but don't then go on to deploy that document further. The court will not allow a party to maintain a claim to privilege whilst preventing the opposing party from inspecting a document that the disclosing party intends to rely on. An election will need to be made.