Today’s guest post is from Jamie Lanphear and Daniel Kadar, both of Reed Smith, who follow product liability events in Europe closely. They are discussing the implications of recent changes on the availability of attorney/client and work product privileges—called “legal professional privilege” in Europe—not only in Europe itself, but how European restrictions might find their way back across the pond to parallel litigation in the United States. As always our guest posters are 100% deserving of all praise (and any blame) from their posts.

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If you’ve ever found yourself grumbling about the breadth of U.S. discovery, you’re not alone. For U.S. lawyers, turning over reams of company documents is a familiar—if unwelcome—part of litigation. For most of our European colleagues outside of the UK, however, the idea of broad, adversarial discovery has generally not been a concern. That’s likely about to change. The EU’s new Product Liability Directive (PLD), which the blog has previously covered here, here, here, and here will expand disclosure obligations in product liability matters across the EU, and the implications for legal privilege—especially for in-house and U.S. counsel—are significant.