ABA Urges U.S. Congress to Approve the Atty-Client Privilege Protection Act of 2009

ABA strongly supports the introduction of this critical legislation that is designed to roll back federal agency policies that continue to wear down fundamental attorney-client privilege, work product and employee legal protections.

The bill was introduced to U.S. Congress by Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, to legalize government lawyers' request to waive attorney-client privilege as a measure of cooperation in civil and criminal investigations.

Co-sponsored by numerous House Judiciary Committee members from both parties of Republicans and Democrats; the proposed legislation recognizes the importance of the attorney-client privilege to our legal system, the economy and the society as a whole.

In its recent release, ABA stated that said bill will "protect confidential attorney-client communications from government-compelled disclosure fosters voluntary compliance with the law, and that benefits everyone."

The association further noted that "government tactics that coerce disclosure, on the other hand, undermine these benefits and our adversarial system of justice, and can unfairly threaten the very survival of organizations, including even the largest, most robust corporations," and added "government policies that pressure companies to refuse to provide employees with legal assistance while investigations are pending, or to fire them for asserting their Fifth Amendment rights, weaken the constitutional presumption of innocence and undermine principles of sound corporate governance."

Moreover, that H.R. 4326, which is similar to Senate bill, S. 445, introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania sometime February of 2009, would make the Justice Department's reforms more permanent; which will give them the full force of law and apply them to all federal agencies.

Though there are speculations and fears from members of ABA that H.R.4326 wouldn't get enough audience from the U.S. Congress and might end up the same fate as S.445, the American Bar believes that H.R. 4326 would truly create a sensible, uniform standard of conduct for all federal agencies and strike the proper balance between the legitimate needs of prosecutors and regulators, as well as the constitutional and fundamental legal rights of individuals and organizations.

To read the bill, please click on the link:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.4326

To read ABA's statement, please click on the link below:

http://www.abanet.org/abanet/media/statement/statement.cfm?releaseid=847