At 01:06 PM 10/26/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>The question of who owns the file has been bandied about for some time.
>Historically there was a consensus in the legal community that the
>client file belonged to the client. That consensus seems to be shifting
>now. There is an argument that lawyers were paid to provide advice. the
>client files may represent what was told to the client, but the client
>did not buy the paper, rather they purchased the legal opinion of the
>lawyer.
>
>Therefore the question of ownership of the paper stored in the warehouse
>is not definitively decided.
>
>Of course when it comes to lawyers, just about everything is subject to
>debate. There are good arguments on both sides. I would hesitate to
>categorically state where the ownership of the files resides at this
>point in time though.

Aside from the comment "Of course when it comes to lawyers, just about
everything is subject to debate", I'd have a hard time agreeing with the
rest of this, and I think there is precedence to prove it's incorrect. When
you work for the Government, as an employee or a contractor, any work you
do and are paid for belongs to the Government, unless it's specifically
exempted in the contract you're working under.

The client DOES buy the paper, and the paper is nothing more than the
vehicle the attorney has chosen to capture the "advice" on. If the attorney
chooses to store everything on their "internal personal hard drive" (read =
brain), then that's a different matter =)

The advice is work product, which is what any client (or employer, for that
matter) is paying for and the attorney (or employee) is paid for generating
work product... their time is billable, they spend their time doing the
work AND recording it to some media form, and whatever they're paid to do,
belongs to who pays for it being done.

Now one could successfully argue that he cabinets it's stored in DO NOT
belong to the client, but the index used to track the files, etc. sure does...

Larry

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance