Tax Blog

With the IRS’s increasing emphasis on transfer pricing and other tax issues that depend upon economic and scientific concepts and analyses, tax attorneys frequently rely on non-legal professionals to provide expert assistance in areas with which an attorney might not be familiar.  While this non-legal expertise helps facilitate the attorney’s representation of her client, the introduction of these non-legal professionals into the attorney-client relationship poses an obvious concern about breaching the attorney-client privilege.  Ordinarily, if someone other than ...

For almost 50 years, lawyers have relied on the “Kovel Rule” to extend the attorney-client privilege to non-testifying accountants or other business experts.   The philosophy behind the rule, so named after the landmark case, United States v. Kovel, 296 F. 2d 918 (2nd. Cir. 1961), is to recognize “the complexities of modern existence [which] prevent attorneys from effectively handling clients' affairs without the help of others . . . .”  Id. at 921.  Without such a rule, disclosure to a third party would constitute a waiver of the attorney-client privilege.

In practice, the ...