Solicitor-client privilege, called attorney-client privilege in the United States, is one of the strongest protections in law. It shields confidential communications between a lawyer and a client from disclosure. But privilege is not automatic armor. It protects communications that are, and are kept, confidential, and the way most files move today, by email, quietly works against that.
Privilege depends on confidentiality
The protection rests on a reasonable expectation of confidentiality. When a privileged document is emailed in plaintext, forwarded, and left sitting in several inboxes and on several servers, the picture of careful confidentiality gets harder to defend. A leak does not just embarrass. It can undercut the very confidentiality the privilege depends on, and it is a malpractice and discipline exposure that is entirely yours.
Why email is the weak link
Standard email is not encrypted end to end. It passes through and rests on multiple servers, exposes metadata such as sender, recipient, and subject even when the body is protected, and cannot be recalled once sent. For material covered by privilege, that is a lot of uncontrolled exposure for something you are professionally obligated to protect.
What reasonable safeguards look like
- Encrypt on the device. Client-side encryption means the file is scrambled before it leaves your computer, so no one in the middle, including the vendor, can read it.
- Control access after the send. Expiry, view limits, and revocation keep a file from living in an inbox for years.
- Keep the friction off the other side. A client or opposing counsel should be able to open a file with a passphrase, not a new account.
Where Privatt fits
Send encrypts each file on your device and shares it as a passphrase-protected link, with no account needed on the other end, and the Vault modes where you hold the keys store confidential matters encrypted before they leave your device, with Privatt-hosted storage on Canadian servers. Taking reasonable steps to keep a communication confidential is exactly what privilege expects, and encryption and access control strengthen that posture rather than weaken it.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Your bar's guidance governs your specific obligations.