TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Jan 13, 2023

During oral arguments this week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan told a lawyer representing an unnamed international tax law firm proposing to expand attorney-client privilege that such a change “is a big ask.” She instead suggested following the “ancient legal principle” of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the ABA Journal reports. Chief Justice John Roberts also seemed skeptical, saying the new test “really puts a lot of work on the judge” hearing the challenge. The American Bar Association is supporting the expanded protection. It says that clients often discuss multiple topics with lawyers that aren’t exclusively law-related, and such discussions “should be protected as a whole, not parsed sentence by sentence or phrase by phrase.” Read the group's amicus brief.