Litigation Alert: New Federal Law To Reduce Litigation Expense

On September 19, 2008, the President signed into law a bill aimed at reducing litigation expense.¹ If you have experienced litigation, you know that a large amount of time and money is spent reviewing documents and data—not just for relevant evidence, but to preserve attorney-client privilege and work-product protection.² A careful review must be made to ensure that no privileged communications are inadvertently disclosed.³ Clients prudently make costly efforts to prevent disclosure of any privileged documents, because a court may find that an inadvertent production of an otherwise inconsequential document has waived the client's privilege for that document and also for all communications concerning the same subject matter.