attorney-client-privilege
How to handle questionable legal correspondence not intended for me?
<p>I have an email address from a public provider consisting of my first name and surname - I routinely get a <em>lot</em> of email for other people with the same name, sometimes I respond with a polite "sorry, you've been given a wrong email address", most of the time I bin the emails.</p>

<p>I received an email recently from a US law firm with privileged documents attached - one of the documents is basically a list of things for the "other me" to lie about in a deposition.</p>

<p>Not "skirting the truth", not "avoiding topics", actual "you need to lie about this, deny it completely or say something which is untrue" advice from the law firm.</p>

<p>Should I report this to the relevant legal association or body?  Or should I simply bin the email and forget about it?</p>

<p>I am not in the same country as the law firm (they are in the US).</p>

<p>Suborning perjury is a criminal offense, at the federal level under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1622" rel="noreferrer">18 USC 1622</a>, and is especially bad for a law firm to do. An attorney has a duty to not allow a client to lie in a legal proceeding, so instructing a client to lie is worse. Legally speaking, you are not compelled to turn them in to the (local US) authorities, unless your country has some odd law requiring citizens to report crimes in foreign countries. Two things can possibly come out of forwarding such an email to the authorities. One is that they will gain access to privileged communication, which they may not be able to use against the client. The other is that they will have evidence of the attorney committing a crime, which is not privileged. See <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/289/1/case.html" rel="noreferrer">Clark v. United States</a>, 289 U.S. 1:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>There is a privilege protecting communications between attorney and
  client. The privilege takes flight if the relation is abused. A client
  who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the
  commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the
  truth be told.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>We take no stance on moral questions as to whether you should or should not.</p>
