Legal Privilege

Information communicated between lawyers and their clients is covered by the concept of Legal Privilege and cannot be released under legislation such as Freedom of Information Act or a SAR under Data Protection (see here).

However we recently had a case at a practice where the practice manager was communicating information about an HR case involving a staff member to an HR company who were providing a legal and HR advice service. The staff member became aware of this correspondence and submitted a Subject Access request for access to it. It was found that as the correspondence user the actual persons name and the HR Service was not a formal legal advice from a Solicitor it was not covered by Legal Privilege and so had to be disclosed.