Solicitor-Client Privilege and Acquiring Lawyers' Papers |
Dear Colleague,
With apologies for cross-posting.
I am writing to ask for your help in a research project that looks at solicitor-client privilege and its impact on the availability of archival sources for the study of the legal profession in Canada.
Background to the Research
Solicitor-client privilege (SCP) provides that communications between lawyer and client in pursuit of legal advice cannot be disclosed without the consent of the client. Absent the client's consent, legal practice states that SCP lasts forever. Consequently, the supposedly permanent duration of SCP has resulted in a gap in the sources for the study of the legal profession in Canada. While the records of courts are publicly available, they document only part of the story. Many law firms and lawyers routinely destroy their client files without considering their historical value. They may also destroy other valuable (albeit potentially privileged) material such as notebooks, legal opinions, diaries, memoirs, and teaching materials. Even if such materials were offered to them, archives are understandably reluctant to acquire lawyers' papers if the privileged materials can never be consulted for research.
Despite this, the papers of some law firms and lawyers that include privileged material are preserved in Canadian archives and available for research, with no apparent consequences to the archives or the lawyers involved. This survey of Canadian archives aims to better understand their policies and practices in acquiring lawyers' papers.
Invitation to Participate
As a subscriber to a listserv that is operated on behalf of Canadian archival institutions, you are invited to participate in a survey of the extent to which Canadian archival institutions acquire lawyers' papers. The questions look at your institution's policies and practices pertaining to the records of lawyers and law firms.
The survey should be completed by the person responsible for your institution's acquisition and access policies, responding on behalf of your institution, not as an individual. If you are not that person, please forward this email to the appropriate individual.
Canadian repositories only please! The understanding of SCP in Canada is different from that in other countries, so responses from elsewhere will skew the data.
Consent, Privacy, and Confidentiality
Participation in the survey is completely voluntary. All data collected will be encrypted and saved on the Investigator's password-protected computer and will be accessible only to the Investigator and her research assistant. The names and email addresses of individuals responding on behalf of their institutions will not be identified in any reports of the completed study. Institutions will be identified only by a code (e.g., repository A). The data will be retained for 5 years and then will be securely destroyed/deleted.
For access to the survey itself, click on the "Submit" button below. Clicking on the "Submit" button does not commit you to completing the survey. You can choose to answer the survey questions after you have read the introduction to the survey itself. Ignore the "Save & return later" button on this page. Once you get into the survey itself, you will be able to save what you've done and return to it later.
Thank you very much for helping with this study. Your repository's participation in this survey is important. The information you provide will help us to better understand and address the impact of solicitor-client privilege on the sources for legal research preserved in Canadian archives.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Investigator at j.dryden@utoronto.ca.
Dr. Jean Dryden
Adjunct Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto j.dryden@utoronto.ca