The Attorney–Client Privilege in Antitrust: Unravelling the Transatlantic Debate

Konstantinos Pantelidis

Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 2025, vol. 21, issue 1, 81-119

Abstract: The Attorney–Client Privilege constitutes an essential and widely recognized right in judicial systems worldwide, aiming to protect the confidentiality of communications between a lawyer and their clients. However, there is no single understanding among jurisdictions on the scope of the privilege, which stems from different approaches between legal traditions as to the role of the lawyer within the judicial system. In adversarial systems, an attorney is an agent and zealous representative of their client, whereas inquisitorial systems consider the lawyer primarily an instrument to the administration of justice and the search for the truth. On this basis, while the US courts recognize the privilege for in-house lawyers, the European Court of Justice has refused such recognition holding that in-house lawyers are not sufficiently independent to safely fulfil their judicial functions. In an environment of increased international trade between the US and the EU it has become ever-more important to understand and scrutinize both approaches. Issues regarding legal professional privilege become increasingly complicated in cases with extraterritorial elements, where foreign interests rise as a crucial element in the assessment.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nhae019 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:21:y:2025:i:1:p:81-119.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Competition Law and Economics is currently edited by Nicholas Economides, Amelia Fletcher, Michal Gal, Damien Geradin, Ioannis Lianos and Tommaso Valletti

More articles in Journal of Competition Law and Economics from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().