four twelve d the aegis statute has eviscerated common law privilege of attorney turning client privilege and whether or not that's been eviscerated this is a question of statutory interpretation and the government's position in this case is that privileges does not survive the statute under the statute that petitioners for attorney fees do not have the right to keep their communication between attorney client privilege and confidential government never said that that privilege never applies never the government has a waiver of sovereign immunity and the other question as to whether or not the topic of attorney client privilege is confidential would be moved to the second issue the issue about the issue about turning client privilege goes to whether or not a topic or generalized topic of communication is ever privileged and it's mr of this disposition the privileged communication can never be summarized encapsulated or generalized without breaking that privilege well if you would certainly concede i suppose that the privilege would not  protect against disclosure of the subject matter of the representation at a certain level of abstraction for example that if mr of mistress was consulting a particular lawyer not only in connection with a criminal matter but say but also in connection  a proceeding it would be necessary for the lawyer to identify those hours that were devoted to the d v d s and do so by reference to subject matter correct not necessarily because of those abstract level in in any type of itemized entry if it says draft client correspondence then there's easily an assumption that the client correspondence correlates with the case for which there is veterans court has asked is more than simply did you did you inform your client did you respond to questions about your about certain matters but once you go beyond what is expected under one point four one point six in your description then you're generalizing and claim that the privilege you're generalizing privileged communication so when you were to if i were to say for example just an example discuss the joint motion for remain with my client that may s absolutely harmless and not to us just have absolutely no privilege whatsoever because this is of so general the problem with that is one of my client would write to me and say i think i committed fraud when i testified do i have to write back in my my generalization discuss fraud with a client but what the problem is that's not this case if there weren't issue about that you might well have a point but take the examples that are on page four of the court's decision those any of those examples disclose something which should be protected let me go to page four to answer your question all confidential materials that wouldn't reveal confidential but that wouldn't reveal any confidence however when the problem is that when you write draft client communication or draft play or in correspondence if you add simply updated update client or answer questions then that wouldn't i would concede that wouldn't the problem is that when you get into more specifics about their generalizations the government will come back and say what are you updating the client about what what did you say in a general sense well if they did that that might be a problem but i don't know that they're taking if the court would decide that there needs me additional specificity under the statute under item is ation simply saying draft clark draft client correspondence to update on case status to answer questions then i would concede to you that that doesn't reveal any privileged information but it actually goes much further than that though and i think that this case is a case that actually goes into privilege and asking what the subject matter is because the issues that were briefed is whether or not there is an obligation to talk about the general the general nature of client communication and if if that's and i would concede that privilege is not implicated if you're simply writing in itin my statement updating case answering questions responding to inquiry then then that doesn't implicate anything at that point but i don't i don't think that this is this case and i would respectfully disagree with you because it's more than that it's about what do you updating about because it doesn't give enough information to the government to say whether or not that's reasonable time so so if you were to read the courts and it is this level of generality and or would be sufficient then you agree that that's not a attorney client sure i would i would concede that if that was it and it stops right there then this case is over i should go home and that's all we need to right but it doesn't stop there because the whole purpose of this decision is that you're not explaining enough or giving enough detail to the government to determine the reasonableness of the fee and they're going to they are asking in my in my view what the general nature of the correspondence is and that general nature is privileged and i think that's what this case is about when you see general nature of the correspondent saying to the let's let's take again you referred to the joint motion discussion to join moshe i mean that the court identifies discussing the communication if that if the topic is discussed the client's letter regarding fraud then i'm preaching the confidentiality and informing the government that my client thinks that there might have been fraud involved and that's going to diminish the full frank discussion between attorneys and clients and let me ask you one question unrelated to the lease not directly related to the privilege issue of the court i'm looking at  the charges for the twenty six instances of client correspondence were all four point two hours yes and the court said that's not enough specificity with respect to time i e we don't know whether  what do you say with respect to that ground of decision to the extent that it is granted decision from the court first off this is the first case that comes to the court on this topic before the veterans court the u s court of appeals about its claims there is a case that is currently stated in a panel decision pending the outcome of this case is called thomas versus an seche and this happened after this case after the briefs already filed in this case and the court was made aware that this case is being heard and it stayed its own panel the social that case actually would deal more with the general topic of general subject matters to general attorney client privilege but in answer to your question in and future future petitions it was made more clear that point two for twelve minutes was a time that was kept as a reason why actors exercised going to scrushy since the itemization could not describe tourney client eternal as a matter of billion judgement it would not the attorney decided not to charge for a bill for more than twelve minutes for a few cation regardless of how long it was but then also suggest the even to reduce without clearly understanding that these times are not billed well i'm sorry i'm not following this who makes the decision that something below point two is not bill that would be the attorney's discretion has reasonable billing supports asking for here is provided but in this case itself mr pearce just provided that level of detail if we look to join appendix page thirty nine after the government challenge each application is not providing sufficient detail mr pierce just provided that level of detail to with respect to a couple of different at these particular items charters for example mr bruce just said that forty eight minutes was necessary to communicate with a client when initially retained forty eight minutes was necessary to communicate with the client regarding the significance of the summary of issues that there was paired and one hour was to discuss a joint motion to remain and and the attorney for the application and that's going expense forty so mr if he was just himself has provided in this very case the level of detail that the veterans courts asking for you know were these periods that were granted it's not entirely clear the veterans court granted two point seven hours worth of communications time and took and didn't grant two and a half this is two point six hours so it looks like yes the veterans court didn't explicitly say these are the times i'm granting and these are the times i'm not but the award from the veterans court included sufficient time to encompass all of these communications so the government would concede these are the kind or with assertions that these are the kinds of descriptions of the veterans court was asking for the veterans courts not asking for some level of specificity not asking for a transcript of all the communications between the attorney and the client but just doesn't work for a government would be satisfied with the level of detail provide d for courts and yes your honor that our view is that that's exactly what the veterans court was asking for and mr abuses ultimately ultimately provided with respect to some of these line items but not as  it's unclear in this case what general proposition of law mr abused to suggesting that this court should provide the he approves of a couple of specifics he says that the on remand of this court were to agree with mr abuse just then the veterans court should look to the totality of the circumstances and say half an hour a month is as a matter of law reasonable or he says that the better his courtship compare the docket she versus the individual entries that he's provided and just look at the time and would know the court would then know that this point two hours is related to a summary of issues and this point to is relate to the reply brief etc this court's explicitly rejected  proposals in now purana iron this court said and i quote that's at eight twenty five x second four zero three this court said we reject unequivocally any suggestion that the claims court had an obligation to on page four of four the statute does not permit an interpretation that an unreasonable charge for an item is somehow made reasonable by the total amount requested there not pro iron was suggesting that three hours a week over the course litigation was as a matter of law a reasonable amount that's not unlike mr of who says argument here that thirty minutes a week is reasonable but this court rejected that that level of generality saying to the itemized requirement an ija requires a line by line description of what is done and the better it's court and all trial courts need to look to each line item determine whether that line item is reasonable but that position is what levels this is required i'm not sure that i understand doesn't seem to accomplish the veterans court said that looking at these twenty six injuries it likely include some overbilling and that's it page three of the veterans court's opinion the problems aren't what basis or i think the problem your honor is that the veterans court couldn't tell them there's just a list of of point two hours communication point to our communication point to our communication without specifying what it was about the court can't tell well that's not quite true there are some description the client correspondence play up client correspondence yes your honor all the correspondences are listed as direct client her spawn and or review client correspondence those are the those are the specific items that issue those are the ones the veterans court said that it couldn't tell whether they were reasonable and said it likely included some overbilling the problem is here using the same petition if mr bruce just had three additional entries for point two hours that said also correspondence the bettors court would have no way of knowing whether that was an error and overbilling or not going to just it strikes me that this is it arguing about something which really doesn't matter needs to exclude any overbilling any duplicate entries and this court felt that in this case the court needed a little bit more specificity in order to determine whether each of these entries was reasonable about its type point as the we required by the veterans or doesn't enable you to make any better with a view of the fee petition than the level specificity that was actually provide i mean this this all seems to be highly theoretical correspondence about the summary of issues that was drafted and this is correspondence about the attorney of the application then the court can look to that and say well point two hours for that is reasonable for two hours for that is is too much  court can can tell whether that's reasonable the specifics of this application i should point out are not before this court because this court of course can't reach the application of lot of fact so the only thing this court can do is look to overall is there a general proposition of law that can be announced well i just or who i'm in we have plenty of cases so when the facts are undisputed we can make a term there's a situation where the facts are on disputed and help to define what the standard judging yes your honor to the degree this court could say there's here's a rule of law is generally applicable but the problem is to say that for this court to say draft client correspondence as a matter of law is reasonable then the veterans court in a few in future issues will have lists of of the petitions to simply say draft blank correspondence without additional detail and as if that as a matter of law this is reasonable we respectfully think that goes against what the supreme court said henslee that the district court has broad discretion to determine the reasonable this in any particular so that it's an application of lot of fact as to each individual case whether the petition before the court was reasonable and it's hard to see what the the rule of law is that this court could establish that would provide greater specificity to that question for future courts because again all that's provided here is already said that he couldn't tell looking at this application he couldn't tell whether this was reasonable and that's a question of just for the veteran sports discretion to determine whether this is reasonable and perhaps i would look at it or your arms would look at when you said that but with that we were doing was providing an alternative we believe the government's position is that there is no conflict here between privilege and each other but if there were a conflict then either would drop if there were a case where the itemized list requirement to be to comes into direct conflict with the privilege because the attorneys the petitioners attorneys saying that the specifics in that case would implicate the privilege and that no i devised this is going to require they're going to be provided for example if the petitioner said i can't provide an itemized list here if i provide an itemized list and i'm violating the privilege then in that case then yes this case is privileged information there could be there is conceivably a case where there's a cop this is in that case and it wouldn't even reach that well you'd have to i suppose you can start with the proposition that that congress could say explicitly that forthy petitions in a particular area out there shall be no attorney client privilege and sort of a constitutional problem with that which would since it's not a criminal case it would have to be constitutional problem that would be that but i would suppose that since congress didn't explicitly say that it would seem likely that congress was not intending to override the attorney c assume that each of overrode the attorney client privilege in which case as long as there isn't a violation of the actual privilege and there's no wish we agree your honor and we don't think there's any conflict here and if we are you aware of any we just been around for a while of course their fee petition cases and civil rights area that have been around for a lot longer than of any other cases in which this issue has been litigated as to whether the application for the few application specificity issue has been argued to be  which there were only a handful of cases that we've been able to find where privilege and the specificity required by any of your application or even discussed in the same case and those are in our head in our brief general i think it's actually decided this issue as far as i can tell so your honor and i think that goes to this is the general point that generally speaking there doesn't seem to be a conflict here and mr abuse makes the same point that none of the cases that the government cited are directly dealing with both feet applications and privilege but our point is that that that points out that this would be to just simply aren't in conflict and it's not a question it's often presented to the court and here again to this specific case mr abuses has a proponent went to a specific reason why one what the veterans court asking for in this particular case would violate the privilege instead he's pointing to a general proposition that communications are privileged and the better source asking for communication but as we put in our brief a number of circuits have said that generally speaking providing the general subject matter is not the problem with the veterans court decision is that if you look on page four as you alluded to before it's asking for that much more specificity and simply what's in the mall rules that are one point four one point six discussing the terms of the post joint motion for email it is discussing a subject or discussing the general nature of the correspondence and that would seem to violate attorney client privilege because how would an attorney respond to or detail in a letter to his client discussing fraud and whether or not fraud is involved in any particular matter that that would obviously seem to breach tourney client privilege the other is simply providing generic information is no different than saying drafting client correspondence or reviewing client correspondence it's all related to the case it doesn't seem to provide any additional information to the government that would be hopeful for them to determine reasonable s and the amount are so small at twelve minutes just it seems like that would be a reasonable exercise of discretion to cap at that level and the court need just find that time is reasonable that's simply it and a