As a threshold matter, the attorney-client privilege provides that at least one attorney must be present on a communication or at least involved in a matter for the privilege to apply. But attorneys and their clients may be surprised to learn there’s an exception to that rule that allows the privilege to attach when individuals perform legal work for clients in a jurisdiction where they’re not licensed.

For example, Fla. Stat. Ann. § 90.502 defines “lawyer” for attorney-client privilege purposes as any “person authorized, or reasonably believed by the client to be authorized, to practice law in any state or nation.” Florida courts have applied the privilege to communications with attorneys licensed outside the state and even individuals not authorized to practice law anywhere, so long as the client reasonably believed it was dealing with an authorized legal practitioner.

Other courts nationwide have also, as the Eastern District of Wisconsin put it, “recognized that so long [as] an attorney is licensed to practice law in some jurisdiction, then the client’s communications to him will be privileged even if the attorney’s advice might technically constitute the unauthorized practice of law in another jurisdiction.”

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