Yes, but he's still using it to prepare his legal arguments and to understand the law.

The reason attorney-client communication is privileged is so that people won't interfere in people's preparation of their case, not because the lawyer is magic. The principled thing is for the courts to apply principles like this based on the principle.

According to the ruling’s citations, the purpose of the privilege is to provide protection for the mind of the advocate. If you’re not the advocate and you’re not talking to the advocate the privilege doesn’t apply. Should-bes in this case are imponderable to me but that appears to be what-is.

Yes, I think that's completely wrong. It focuses on the advocate as some kind of special role, but I think the core problem is preparing for a court case, and I don't think it makes sense to focus on him.

I think an accused should be able to make strategy notes for a court case and be able to have those be secret from the prosecution, and to look up things for these purposes, and, to use Google docs etc. if he so wants.

I also see that some other comments describe that work product has previously been treated as a broader notion with less focus on the advocate and more on preparing for the court case, so I'm far from convinced this has been decided correctly.

I understand why you feel that way, but the current policy is not in the direction you are hoping for. The important thing to understand is that all evidence is available by default, that privilege covers the exceptions to that availability. Privilege is construed narrowly, and for now, communications with your advocate, or notes prepared at the request of your advocate, are the sorts of things that are covered. Your own private notes, or chats with your friends about the state of your case, are examples of things that are not covered.

Work product was treated more broadly in one case by a lower magistrate court, but the court making the decision in this case is not bound by that lower court's ruling. What will be interesting is if this ruling gets appealed up to the sups. I doubt the decision will be overruled in any case.

But the actual rule for civil cases (federal rules of civil procedure) is

>(A) Documents and Tangible Things. Ordinarily, a party may not discover documents and tangible things that are prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial by or for another party or its representative (including the other party's attorney, consultant, surety, indemnitor, insurer, or agent). But, subject to Rule 26(b)(4), those materials may be discovered if:

So the "by or for another party or its representative" seems more like my thinking than the thinking you're describing.

I think considering other statements, Rakoff is certainly wrong. The documents were prepared as part of pretrial preparations. Non-experts need to be able to use search engines, books, etc. and which books someone was handed for their pretrial preparations, or what lookups they have made can't be the business of their opponents. You have an adversarial system. One party can't have access to the pretrial preparations of the other party, it won't lead to fair trials.

Is a VPN really going to help here? I guess if you can figure out a way to pay Claude anonymously. But if you are charged with a crime and your computer is siezed, and there is some way to discover your Claude account from the contents of your computer, then you will be up a creek either way.

My takeaway is: don't do crime, and if you must do crime, don't use AI in the commission of a crime, in a similar way as it is unwise for criminals to keep recordings of their own phone conversations or what have you (a surprisingly common habit for criminals!).

That's a great takeaway, but may not be practically achievable in the world where

> The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day.

-- https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

That claim by the way, is totally unsubstantiated, and the cases have very questionable applicability to the "average professional".

I once saw a talk given by a lawyer on exactly this topic. It was a long time ago, unfortunately I won't be able to find it. Anyway, the takeaway is that there are plenty of Federal laws that are written in such a way that there is incredible room for interpretation by prosecutors. Vagueness and overbroad language to the point that indeed they can come up with some kind of crime pretty much any time they want to.

On the other hand, that kind of thing would not only be enough to bring a case. They use that kind of power to enhance their case against people they know are real criminals. Of course, the more the Justice Department becomes captured by bad actors, the less this applies.

In a state that I lived in, one day the laws changed and I became a felon overnight for not registering certain inanimate objects with my state govt.

I don’t think very many people charged with federal crimes are actually just innocent bystanders. So even if we grant that people are technically committing three felonies a day (which I don’t) I think the admonition can simply be read “don’t do crimes that a federal prosecutor might actually charge you with.”