The Crime Fraud Exception
I mentioned the crime fraud exception as an exception to otherwise privileged attorney work product or attorney - client communications. Let’s go over the purpose and effect of this exception.
The crime-fraud exception prevents abuse of the relationship between the client and attorney. The purpose of the exception is to make sure that the protection and secrecy of attorney-client discussions doesn’t extend to communications made for the purpose of continuing or contemplating criminal or fraudulent behavior. Courts have also recognized other situations involving wrongdoing that don’t necessarily amount to crime or fraud and applied the exception there too.
Two conditions must be met for the crime fraud exception to apply:
1. The client must have made or received the otherwise privileged communication with the intent to further an unlawful or fraudulent act
2. The client must have carried out the crime or fraud
What’s the reason behind that second requirement? Otherwise this exception would prevent clients from seeking advice about a bad idea and receiving advice leading them to comply with the law.
For work product, it’s more difficult to apply exceptions like this to documents containing attorney’s mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, or legal theories. I’ll go over this more when we discuss the substantial need exception, an exception that applies to work product, but NOT attorney-client privilege.
Please comment with any discovery or privilege related info you’d like to hear about, including cases you may have read about in the news or seen on tv!
Not all of these can involve tv shows, but I’m doing my best to make this entertaining and educational!









