Work Product Doctrine: Inadvertent Disclosure Of Confidential Information

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a. Work Product Doctrine
The Work Product Doctrine provides limited protection on discoverable materials. It protects material prepared by the attorney or those working for the attorney, in anticipate of litigation or for trial. The work product doctrine is different than the attorney-client privilege. The purpose of the attorney-client privilege is to encourage clients to make full disclosures to their attorneys. The purpose of the work product doctrine is to establish a zone of privacy for strategic litigation planning and to prevent one party from using the adversary's preparation. The exception and limitations of the Work Product Doctrine is that it does not cover document prepared in the normal operation of the client’s business. In …show more content…

The new technology in the modern era more work more efficient because we can communicate by a simple push of button on email, fax or speed dial. However, the down side is sometime this great speed would result in careless mistakes such as sending email, fax or call the wrong contact person and exposing privilege information by mistake. Therefore, it is an important habit to always to double check your work and who you are sending information to before you send it. It is a good habit to step away from your work and save it as a draft then come back to it and double before sending it out. The court may determine the admissibility of inadvertently disclosed document base on one of the following discussed three point of …show more content…

The Viewpoint I propose as the most suitable to utilize in court cases is the Balancing Test because mistakes can occur for many different reasons and different information may be exposed therefore I believe it is important to determine inadvertent disclosure of confidential information by looking into each case’s circumstance. I believe the court should not waive the privilege if the law firms have a good system to minimize inadvertent disclosure such as confidential labeling, and categorizing, notice their mistakes immediately and take steps to correct it. In additional, the court should not waive the privilege if the disclosure would significantly affect the case because the client should not be penalized for the firm’s mistake. On the other hand, if law firm are disorganized and have no method for protecting the information, who take days or never even notice it’s mistake, the court should waive the privilege as punishment if it doesn’t affect the client’s case

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