The police had sought disclosure from the applicant’s solicitors of records of the time at which the applicant arrived at the solicitors’ premises on a particular date and like documents.
Held: Such records are not privileged because they did not relate to legal advice or the subject matter of legal advice. Records of appointments made are not protected, although extracts are not to be made from advice records. A record of an attendance at a solicitor’s office by a client for an appointment, which must involve giving the name of the client, was a communication between client and solicitor, but not one that attracted legal professional privilege.
Lord Bingham LC said: ‘It is in my judgment important to remind oneself of the well established purpose of legal professional privilege, which is to enable a client to make full disclosure to his legal adviser for the purposes of seeking legal advice without apprehension that anything said by him in seeking advice or to him in giving it may thereafter be subject to disclosure against his will. It is certainly true that in cases such as Balabel v Air India [1988] Ch 317, the court has discountenanced a narrow or nit-picking approach to documents and has ruled out an approach which takes a record of a communication sentence by sentence and extends the cloak of privilege to one and withholds it from another. It is none the less true that legal professional privilege applies, and applies only, to communications made for the purpose of seeking and receiving legal advice.
In this case we must consider the function and nature of the documents with which we are concerned. The record of time on an attendance note, on a time sheet or fee record is not in my judgment in any sense a communication. It records nothing which passes between the solicitor and the client and it has nothing to do with obtaining legal advice. It is the same sort of record as might arise if a call were made on a dentist or a bank manager. A record of an appointment made does involve a communication between the client and the solicitor’s office but is not in my judgment, without more, to be regarded as made in connection with legal advice. So to hold would extend the scope of legal privilege far beyond its proper sphere, in my view . . ‘
Judges:
Lord Bingham CJ
Citations:
Times 15-Feb-1999, Gazette 10-Mar-1999, [1999] EWHC Admin 94, [1999] 1 WLR 832
Links:
Statutes:
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Leave granted – Regina v Manchester Crown Court ex parte Rogers Admn 6-Nov-1998
Application for leave to apply for judicial review granted. . .
Cited by:
Full review – Regina v Manchester Crown Court ex parte Rogers Admn 6-Nov-1998
Application for leave to apply for judicial review granted. . .
Cited – Regina (Howe) v South Durham Magistrates Court QBD 13-Feb-2004
The defendant was convicted of driving whilst disqualified. He had put the prosecution to proof of the fact that it was he who had been prosecuted. The prosecution called his solicitor to give evidence that it was his client who had been banned on . .
Cited – Miller Gardner Solicitors, Regina (on the Application of) v Minshull Street Crown Court Admn 20-Dec-2002
Police investigating crime obtained a warrant to search a solicitor’s offices for details of their clients. The solicitors appealed.
Held: The details required, namely dates of contacts with a certain telephone number were not legally . .
Cited – Curtis v Curtis CA 8-Mar-2001
The mother sought leave to call in evidence in proceedings for contact, an affidavit sworn by the father’s previous solicitors when applying to be removed from the record, which related the contents of telephone calls from the father to their . .
Cited – Regina v Manchester Crown Court, ex parte McCann and others QBD 22-Nov-2000
An application for an anti-social behaviour order against an individual was a civil, not a criminal proceeding. The standard of evidence required was on the balance of probability; the civil standard. Such proceedings were not subject to the . .
Cited – SRJ v Person(s) Unknown (Author and Commenters of Internet Blogs) QBD 10-Jul-2014
The claimant sought an order for the disclosure by his solicitor of the identity of the author of an internet blog publishing critical material which, the claimant said, was its confidential information. The defendant’s solicitor had failed to . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Legal Professions, Crime
Updated: 28 May 2022; Ref: scu.139358