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I have an email address from a public provider consisting of my first name and surname - I routinely get a lot of email for other people with the same name, sometimes I respond with a polite "sorry, you've been given a wrong email address", most of the time I bin the emails.

I received an email recently from a US law firm with privileged documents attached - one of the documents is basically a list of things for the "other me" to lie about in a deposition.

Not "skirting the truth", not "avoiding topics", actual "you need to lie about this, deny it completely or say something which is untrue" advice from the law firm.

Should I report this to the relevant legal association or body? Or should I simply bin the email and forget about it?

I am not in the same country as the law firm (they are in the US).

2 Answers2

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Suborning perjury is a criminal offense, at the federal level under 18 USC 1622, and is especially bad for a law firm to do. An attorney has a duty to not allow a client to lie in a legal proceeding, so instructing a client to lie is worse. Legally speaking, you are not compelled to turn them in to the (local US) authorities, unless your country has some odd law requiring citizens to report crimes in foreign countries. Two things can possibly come out of forwarding such an email to the authorities. One is that they will gain access to privileged communication, which they may not be able to use against the client. The other is that they will have evidence of the attorney committing a crime, which is not privileged. See Clark v. United States, 289 U.S. 1:

There is a privilege protecting communications between attorney and client. The privilege takes flight if the relation is abused. A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.

We take no stance on moral questions as to whether you should or should not.

user6726
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Please keep in mind that once they run into problems they will probably find out that they used the wrong email and that it was you who forwarded the information. So depending on the level of criminality you should also assess how that could fire back.

justin
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