How to Draft a Privilege Log
- 1). Check the applicable rules. The rules of civil practice for the court in which your case is pending may expressly state the required contents and form of privilege logs. If you are in federal court, for instance, your starting point should be Rule 26(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
- 2). Check your judge's standing orders or case management procedures. Many judges have specific standing instructions regarding privilege logs. Those that do expect all litigants appearing before them to comply with those instructions. For federal judges, standing orders can be found online, on the judge's page on the court website. For state judges, availability varies, but if you are uncertain as to whether there is an applicable order, a call to the judge's clerk or deputy can get you started.
- 3). Create a table or spreadsheet to serve as the template for your privilege log. The rows of the table will be the individual documents that need to be logged, while the columns will contain information about each of those documents. You should set up a column for every category of information required by the applicable rules and your judge's standing orders. Categories of information which should typically be listed include: the category of document (email, letter, report), title or subject line, author, recipients, date of creation or transmission, bates numbers (a system of marking individual pages often used in litigation) if applicable, subject matter, type of applicable privilege (attorney-client privilege, work product protection, spousal privilege, doctor-patient privilege, etc.).
- 4). Review each document for privilege.
- 5). Log each document where privilege is present, filling in all possible columns. Use care, particularly when describing the subject matter of the document. Although you must provide enough information to support the claim of privilege, if you provide too much information you could provide your opponent with an unwarranted advantage or even risk waiving the very privilege you are claiming. When logging a document that has attachments, be sure to reference those attachments, either by logging them separately or by including them in the description of the document on the log.
