My dad was a small-town (population 897) lawyer. For as long as I can remember, he had a West Publishing Company freebie sign in his office that read, “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.” He died in 1995, and the sign now hangs in my office to the immediate left of my phone and computer screens.

Many lawyers (indeed, many people) forget this. Time is a finite resource — one cannot make more of it. One who spends an hour doing one thing forever loses the opportunity to spend that hour doing something else. A lawyer’s choices about investing their time (and their money) significantly affects their future.

Because I value time, I value legal books that help me save it. I look for complete and authoritative books, seek out books where I can find helpful information quickly, and buy books that will reveal issues that I may not have thought of on my own. Privileges and Protections: Tennessee and Sixth Circuit Law, by Nashville lawyers E. Todd Presnell and Kristi W. Arth, checks each of these boxes.

Now, the law of privilege is not the most exciting topic in law practice. If there were a seminar on the subject, it would be held in Omaha in January in a windowless, 1960s-era convention center surrounded by icy streets during a citywide bartenders’ strike.

But this is precisely why the practicing lawyer needs a comprehensive book on the subject: when you need to know the law of privilege, you must be able to rely on what you read and the source must educate you to what you don’t know you don’t know. This all-inclusive book provides a lawyer with that assurance and that new knowledge.

After discussing the history and public policy behind the law of privilege, Presnell and Arth thoroughly discuss over 20 distinct types of privileges. Do you have an attorney-client privilege issue? The book has 120 pages of discussion and 717 footnotes citing well over 1,000 court rules, statutes, court decisions and articles on the subject.

Do you want to know the law of privilege logs in Tennessee and the federal 6th Circuit? The book collects the relevant cases and articles for you. Every trial lawyer will learn something valuable from reading this subchapter.

Are you interested in how a civil defendant’s self-incrimination privilege affects the progression of the civil case, or whether the privilege’s invocation is admissible in the civil action? Chapter 7 addresses these topics.

Is your Tennessee state court opponent refusing to produce documents and asserting the self-evaluation privilege? In less than 30 seconds, you can discover that this creature only exists in Tennessee in two contexts — medical peer-review privileges and the accountant peer-review privilege. In other situations, the often-asserted privilege does not exist in Tennessee.

I should not admit this aloud, but I learned several new things by reading the Table of Contents. The business strategy privilege? It’s not a privilege at all but is mistakenly called one by some courts. I was unaware of it. The book covers this in Chapter 16.09. Are you aware of an interpreter’s privilege? The concept makes sense, but I was unaware of this privilege, too. Find details in Chapter 16.03.

A reader of the book will often see a phrase in it like this one: “Tennessee’s appellate courts have not addressed this issue.” Trial lawyers who have had to research the law of privileges know this to be frequently true: Tennessee state courts rarely address privilege issues. But even statements of this type provide value to the practitioner — knowing that there are no Tennessee decisions or other law on the subject allows the advocate to draw on the non-controlling law and articles referenced in the book to educate and persuade the trial judge.

It is not only trial lawyers who will receive help from this book. Corporate lawyers, either in-house or outside counsel, can benefit, too, particularly from Chapter 14 (Attorney-Client Privilege) and Chapter 15 (Privilege Sharing Doctrine). There are also entire chapters devoted to privileges relating to financial institutions, trade secrets and health care-related privileges.

By authoring this book, Presnell and Arth have performed a valuable service for the Tennessee Bench and Bar. A lawyer with this book in their library will gain knowledge, save time and save money. Who could ask more from any professional book? |||

JOHN A. DAY is a regular Tennessee Bar Journal columnist and a personal injury attorney with offices in Brentwood, Nashville and Murfreesboro.