Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05051/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05051-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 895
Nature of Suit: Freedom of Information Act of 1974
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 14, 2016 Decided July 19, 2016

Reissued December 20, 2016

No. 15-5051

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS,

APPELLANT

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EXECUTIVE OFFICE 

FOR UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS AND UNITED STATES 

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:14-cv-00269)

Yaakov M. Roth argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs were Kerri L. Ruttenberg and Julia Fong 

Sheketoff.

Jason W. Burge, Alysson L. Mills, and Jesse C. Stewart

were on the brief for amici curiae Sixty-three law professors 

in support of appellant.

John D. Cline was on the brief for amici curiae American 

Civil Liberties Union, et al. in support of appellant.

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Timothy P. O'Toole and Addy Schmitt were on the brief 

for amici curiae The Constitution Project and The Innocence 

Project in support of appellant.

Lewis Yelin argued the cause for appellees. With him on 

the brief were Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant 

Attorney General, Vincent H. Cohen, Jr., Acting U.S. 

Attorney, and Leonard Schaitman, Attorney.

Before: SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

Concurring opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge

SENTELLE, with whom Senior Circuit Judge EDWARDS joins.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge: The National Association of 

Criminal Defense Lawyers submitted a request under the 

Freedom of Information Act to obtain an internal Department 

of Justice publication known as the Federal Criminal 

Discovery Blue Book. The Blue Book is a manual created by 

the Department to guide federal prosecutors in the practice of 

discovery in criminal prosecutions. It contains information 

and advice for prosecutors about conducting discovery in their 

cases, including guidance about the government’s various 

obligations to provide discovery to defendants.

The Department refused to disclose the Blue Book, 

invoking the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption 5, 

which exempts from disclosure certain agency records that 

would be privileged from discovery in a lawsuit with the 

agency. The Department maintained that the Blue Book fell 

within the attorney work-product privilege, and therefore 

Exemption 5, because it was prepared by (and for) attorneys 

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in anticipation of litigation. The district court agreed that the 

Blue Book is privileged attorney work product and thus is 

exempt from disclosure. We likewise conclude that the Blue 

Book consists of exempt attorney work product, but we 

remand to the district court for an assessment of whether the 

Blue Book also contains non-exempt policy statements 

amenable to reasonable segregation from the privileged work 

product.

I.

A.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that 

government agencies must make agency records available to 

citizens upon request, subject to nine enumerated exemptions. 

5 U.S.C. § 552. “Congress intended FOIA to permit access to 

official information long shielded unnecessarily from public 

view.” Milner v. Dep’t of Navy, 562 U.S. 562, 565 (2011)

(internal citations and quotation marks omitted). The 

statutory exemptions, accordingly, “are explicitly made 

exclusive and must be narrowly construed.” Id. (internal 

citations and quotation marks omitted). 

Under Exemption 5, agencies may withhold “interagency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would 

not be available by law to a party other than an agency in 

litigation with the agency.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). Exemption 

5 covers records that would be “normally privileged in the 

civil discovery context.” NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 

U.S. 132, 149 (1975). The exemption allows the government 

to withhold records from FOIA disclosure under at least three 

privileges: the deliberative-process privilege, the attorneyclient privilege, and the attorney work-product privilege. 

Coastal States Gas Corp. v. Dep’t of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, 

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862 (D.C. Cir. 1980). This case solely involves the last of 

those privileges, the attorney work-product privilege.

B.

On December 20, 2012, the National Association of 

Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) sent a FOIA request to 

the Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking disclosure of the 

Blue Book. DOJ processed the request under the direction of 

Susan Gerson, Assistant Director in the FOIA/Privacy Act 

Staff of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. After

reviewing the Blue Book and consulting with DOJ staff

familiar with the Book’s inception and drafting, Gerson 

determined that it should be withheld in full pursuant to FOIA 

Exemptions 5 and 7(E). (The latter exemption, which we 

have no occasion to reach, exempts certain types of “records 

or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.” 5 

U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E).) On February 28, 2013, Gerson sent 

NACDL a form letter invoking both exemptions and denying 

its request.

After unsuccessfully appealing the denial, NACDL 

brought this FOIA suit in the district court seeking to compel 

DOJ to release the Blue Book. The parties filed crossmotions for summary judgment, and DOJ again invoked 

Exemptions 5 and 7(E) in support of its decision to withhold 

the Blue Book in full. Because the parties disagreed about 

how to characterize the Blue Book’s contents, the district 

court reviewed the Book in camera before rendering its 

decision on the merits of DOJ’s decision to withhold.

Following its in camera review of the Blue Book, the 

district court granted DOJ’s motion for summary judgment. 

Nat’l Ass’n of Criminal Def. Lawyers v. Exec. Office for U.S.

Attorneys, 75 F. Supp. 3d 552 (D.D.C. 2014). The court

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found that DOJ was not required to disclose any portion of the

Blue Book, holding that the Book in its entirety is protected as 

attorney work product. Id. at 557, 561. Because the court 

found that the Blue Book could be withheld in full under 

Exemption 5, it did not address the applicability of Exemption 

7(E). Id. at 556.

II.

NACDL appeals, arguing that the claimed FOIA 

exemptions are inapplicable and the Blue Book therefore 

should be disclosed in full. We review the district court’s 

decision de novo. See Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 

432 F.3d 366, 369 (D.C. Cir. 2005). In doing so, we must 

“ascertain whether the agency has sustained its burden of 

demonstrating that the documents requested are . . . exempt 

from disclosure under the FOIA.” Assassination Archives & 

Research Ctr. v. CIA, 334 F.3d 55, 57 (D.C. Cir. 2003) 

(quoting Summers v. Dep’t of Justice, 140 F.3d 1077, 1080 

(D.C. Cir. 1998)) (quotation marks omitted). When making 

that determination, we rely centrally on the agency’s

descriptions of the content of the relevant documents as set 

forth in its Vaughn index and accompanying affidavits. See 

Mead Data Cent., Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Air Force, 566 F.2d

242, 251 (D.C. Cir. 1977). We conclude that the Blue Book 

consists of attorney work product which is exempt from 

disclosure under FOIA’s Exemption 5. 

A.

Courts have long recognized that materials prepared by 

one’s attorney in anticipation of litigation are generally 

privileged from discovery by one’s adversary. See Hickman 

v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 510-12 (1947); In re Sealed Case, 

146 F.3d 881, 884 (D.C. Cir. 1998). The attorney workUSCA Case #15-5051 Document #1651813 Filed: 12/20/2016 Page 5 of 24
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product privilege applies in both civil and criminal cases. See

United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 225, 236-38 (1975); Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 26(b)(3); Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(2), 16(b)(2)(A). 

The privilege aims primarily to protect “the integrity of 

the adversary trial process itself.” Jordan v. Dep’t of Justice, 

591 F.2d 753, 775 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (en banc). It does so by 

“provid[ing] a working attorney with a ‘zone of privacy’ 

within which to think, plan, weigh facts and evidence, 

candidly evaluate a client’s case, and prepare legal theories.” 

Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 864. Without the privilege, “much 

of what is now put down in writing would remain unwritten” 

because “[a]n attorney’s thoughts, heretofore inviolate, would 

not be his own.” Hickman, 329 U.S. at 511. Protecting 

attorney work product from disclosure prevents attorneys 

from litigating “on wits borrowed from the adversary.” Id. at 

516 (Jackson, J., concurring). 

“Congress had the attorney’s work-product privilege 

specifically in mind when it adopted Exemption 5” to the 

FOIA. Sears, 421 U.S. at 154. Not every document created 

by a government lawyer, however, qualifies for the privilege 

(and thus, the exemption). “[I]f an agency were entitled to 

withhold any document prepared by any person in the 

Government with a law degree simply because litigation 

might someday occur, the policies of the FOIA would be 

largely defeated.” Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 865. To avoid 

that result, we have long required a case-specific 

determination that a particular document in fact was prepared 

in anticipation of litigation before applying the privilege to 

government records. See, e.g., Senate of Puerto Rico v. U.S. 

Dep’t of Justice, 823 F.2d 574, 586-87 (D.C. Cir. 1987). 

In ascertaining whether a document was prepared in 

anticipation of litigation, we have applied a “‘because of’ test, 

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asking whether, in light of the nature of the document and the 

factual situation in the particular case, the document can fairly 

be said to have been prepared or obtained because of the 

prospect of litigation.” United States v. Deloitte LLP, 610 

F.3d 129, 137 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting Sealed Case, 146 

F.3d at 884). For that standard to be met, the attorney who 

created the document must have “had a subjective belief that 

litigation was a real possibility,” and that subjective belief 

must have been “objectively reasonable.” Sealed Case, 146 

F.3d at 884.

B.

We find those standards satisfied with regard to the Blue 

Book. DOJ explains that “[t]he Blue Book was designed to 

provide advice regarding the law and practice of federal 

prosecutors’ discovery disclosure obligations and to serve as a 

litigation manual to be used by all DOJ prosecutors and 

paralegals” in their cases. Goldsmith First Decl. ¶ 5 (J.A. 93). 

As a result, DOJ says, the Blue Book was “created in 

anticipation of reasonably foreseeable litigation,” namely, 

federal criminal prosecutions. Gerson Decl. ¶ 17 (J.A. 84); 

see id. ¶ 20 (J.A. 85). We agree.

The Blue Book “describ[es] the nature and scope of 

[federal prosecutors’] discovery obligations under applicable 

constitutional provisions, caselaw, and the Federal Rules of 

Criminal Procedure.” Gerson Decl. ¶ 20 (J.A. 85). It consists 

of “nine chapters, written by DOJ prosecutors with expertise 

in a wide range of discovery-related topics,” addressing 

subjects including: Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, 

regarding discovery; the government’s obligations to disclose 

exculpatory information under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 

83 (1963) and Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972); 

disclosure duties arising from the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. 

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§ 3500; items protected from disclosure; and the use of 

protective orders and ex parte and in camera submissions in 

discovery. Goldsmith First Decl. ¶ 5 (J.A. 93). 

According to DOJ, the Blue Book is not a “neutral 

analysis of the law” but rather “contain[s] confidential legal 

analysis and strategies to support the Government’s 

investigations and prosecutions.” Gerson Decl. ¶ 21 (J.A.

86). In contrast with publicly-available documents such as 

the United States Attorneys’ Manual, which set out statements 

of agency policy, the Blue Book is an internal manual 

containing litigation strategies. Goldsmith Second Decl. ¶ 7 

(J.A. 103). It gives “practical ‘how-to’ advice,” Goldsmith 

First Decl. ¶ 5 (J.A. 94), to federal prosecutors about “how to 

handle different scenarios and problems,” Gerson Decl. ¶ 20

(J.A. 85). It discusses “the types of challenges [prosecutors] 

may encounter in the course of prosecutions and potential 

responses and approaches.” Goldsmith Second Decl. ¶ 8 (J.A. 

103); accord Goldsmith First Decl. ¶ 14 (J.A. 99). The Book 

“contemplates facts that may arise in judicial proceedings” 

and evaluates “how a court would likely consider those facts.” 

Goldsmith First Decl. ¶ 6 (J.A. 94). 

DOJ thus argues that disclosing the Blue Book would 

“essentially provide a road map to the strategies federal 

prosecutors employ in criminal cases.” Id. It contends that 

disclosure would afford anyone who wanted to read the Blue 

Book (including opposing counsel) “unprecedented insight 

into the thought processes of federal prosecutors.” Id. ¶ 12 

(J.A. 98). Disclosure thus would “undermine the criminal 

trial process by revealing the internal legal decision-making, 

strategies, procedures, and opinions critical to the 

Department’s handling of federal prosecutions.” Id. ¶ 13 

(J.A. 98). In addition, it would “severely hamper the 

adversarial process[,] as DOJ attorneys would no longer feel 

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free to memorialize critical thoughts on litigation strategies 

for fear that the information might be disclosed to their 

adversaries to the detriment [of] the government’s current and 

future litigating positions.” Id.

Taking into account the nature, content, and function of 

the Blue Book as described in DOJ’s affidavits, we believe it 

“can fairly be said to have been prepared . . . because of the 

prospect of litigation.” Deloitte, 610 F.3d at 137 (quoting 

Sealed Case, 146 F.3d at 884). Our in camera review of the 

Blue Book confirms that the affidavits accurately describe the 

Book and its contents. The Book therefore consists of 

protected attorney work product. 

C.

NACDL does not dispute that the Blue Book was 

prepared for use in litigation. It claims that the Blue Book 

nonetheless falls outside the work-product privilege for three

reasons: (i) the Blue Book was not prepared in anticipation of 

litigating a specific claim or case; (ii) the Blue Book 

principally serves a non-adversarial function; and (iii) the 

Blue Book’s content resembles that of a neutral treatise. We 

find each of those arguments unpersuasive.

1.

NACDL’s principal contention is that the Blue Book 

cannot qualify for the work-product privilege because, even if 

it was created in contemplation of litigation generally, it was 

not prepared in anticipation of litigating a specific claim or 

case. NACDL reads our decisions to establish a specificclaim requirement for government documents to qualify for 

work-product protection, at least in the context of 

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government-initiated litigation such as criminal prosecutions. 

NACDL misunderstands our decisions.

As an initial matter, we have long held that there is no 

general, overarching requirement that a governmental 

document can fall within the work-product privilege only if 

prepared in anticipation of litigating a specific claim. See 

Sealed Case, 146 F.3d at 885; Schiller v. NLRB, 964 F.2d 

1205, 1208 (D.C. Cir. 1992); Delaney, Migdail & Young, 

Chartered v. IRS, 826 F.2d 124, 126-28 (D.C. Cir. 1987). In 

Schiller, for instance, we held that the privilege covered

NLRB documents providing direction and advice to agency 

lawyers on the litigation of cases under the Equal Access to 

Justice Act. 964 F.2d at 1208. We specifically rejected the 

contention “that the work-product doctrine requires that the 

documents be created in anticipation of litigation over a 

specific claim.” Id. “Exemption 5 extends to documents 

prepared in anticipation of foreseeable litigation,” we 

explained, “even if no specific claim is contemplated.” Id. 

(citing Delaney, 826 F.2d at 127).

That is not to say that anticipation (or non-anticipation) 

of a specific claim can never have any relevance when 

assessing the applicability of the work-product privilege. The 

contemplation of specific claims can help differentiate 

situations in which lawyers have litigation adequately in mind 

from those in which lawyers are not (yet) sufficiently 

anticipating litigation. 

Our decision in Coastal States Gas Corporation v. 

Department of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, is illustrative. Coastal 

States involved memoranda drafted by Department of Energy

lawyers to assist Department auditors in interpreting agency 

regulations. The auditors used the memoranda when auditing

firms for compliance with agency regulations. Those audits 

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were not considered “investigations,” because, “at that point, 

no charge had been made nor was a violation necessarily 

suspected.” Id. at 858. But if an auditor subsequently 

determined that a firm had committed a violation, the audit 

could turn into a more targeted investigation and, in some 

cases, give rise to litigation. See id. at 858-60.

We denied application of the work-product privilege to 

the memoranda in Coastal States, finding “no indication . . . 

that there was even the dimmest expectation of litigation 

when the[] documents were drafted.” Id. at 865. We said that

“[t]o argue that every audit is potentially the subject of 

litigation is to go too far.” Id. The Department thus had 

“failed to carry its burden of establishing that litigation was

fairly foreseeable at the time the memoranda were prepared.” 

Id. We distinguished the memoranda from documents 

“prepared with a specific claim supported by concrete facts 

which would likely lead to litigation in mind.” Id. 

Accordingly, in a later case involving documents prepared “in 

the course of an investigation” that “had reached the stage . . . 

at which [the agency] was comparing the accumulated facts to 

the caselaw and evaluating” specific legal theories to pursue, 

we held that litigation was “sufficiently ‘in mind’ for [the]

document[s] to qualify as attorney work product.” SafeCard 

Servs. Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d 1197, 1203 (D.C. Cir. 1991).

In both Coastal States and SafeCard, we used language 

suggesting that, for the documents in question to be prepared 

with an enforcement action sufficiently on the horizon to 

implicate the work-product privilege, the agency’s 

investigation must have advanced to the point that the 

documents’ authors contemplated bringing “a specific claim 

supported by concrete facts.” SafeCard, 926 F.2d at 1202 

(quoting Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 865). In neither case, 

however, did we establish any across-the-board specific-claim 

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prerequisite for application of the privilege. Indeed, as noted, 

we later specifically disavowed any such specific-claim 

requirement in Schiller, 964 F.2d at 1208. 

Rather, the point of the specific-claim inquiry in Coastal 

States and SafeCard was to differentiate between audits as to

which enforcement litigation might well never take place, 

Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 865, and active investigations with 

an enforcement action foreseeably at hand, SafeCard, 926 

F.2d at 1202-03. In those cases, looking at whether agency 

attorneys were contemplating a specific claim proved useful 

in assessing the likelihood that litigation would ever come to 

pass. At an early stage, such as a neutral compliance audit 

with no specific claim (or even any violation) in mind, there is 

insufficient reason to anticipate litigation. But for documents 

created at a later stage in which the agency contemplates 

bringing a specific action, disclosure might reveal the 

government’s “legal theories,” “weigh[ing of] facts and 

evidence,” or “candid[] evaluat[ion]” of a case. See Coastal 

States, 617 F.2d at 864.

We face a very different situation here. A specific-claim 

requirement would make little sense in the context of the Blue 

Book. Unlike the audit documents at issue in Coastal 

States—which might well never be used (or be of use) in 

litigation—the Blue Book is entirely about the conduct of 

litigation. It is aimed directly for use in (and will inevitably 

be used in) litigating cases. Its disclosure therefore risks 

revealing DOJ’s litigation strategies and legal theories 

regardless of whether it was prepared with a specific claim in 

mind. It was prepared with the litigation of all charges and 

all cases in mind. The presence or absence of a specific claim 

or transaction might be a helpful consideration in the context 

of an agency compliance inquiry with no enforcement action 

or litigation necessarily on the horizon. But it is an unhelpful 

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consideration here given that the Blue Book undoubtedly was 

created in anticipation of—and for use in—foreseeable

litigation, i.e., federal criminal prosecutions.

NACDL relies heavily on our decision in Sealed Case, 

146 F.3d 881. There, we considered the applicability of the 

work-product privilege to a lawyer’s notes and other 

documents prepared in anticipation of a possible action 

brought against the lawyer’s client. We found the documents

were covered by the privilege even though no specific claim

against the client had yet emerged. See id. at 885-86. In 

discussing the significance of the fact that no specific claim 

had arisen by the time of the documents’ creation, we drew a 

distinction between two types of cases. First, we pointed to 

Coastal States and SafeCard in observing that, in prior cases 

in which “the documents at issue had been prepared by 

government lawyers in connection with active investigations 

of potential wrongdoing,” we had required anticipation of a 

specific claim in order to invoke the work-product privilege. 

Id. at 885. By contrast, in cases like Schiller, in which 

lawyers acted “not as prosecutors or investigators of 

suspected wrongdoers, but as legal advisors protecting their 

agency clients from the possibility of future litigation,” we 

rejected the need for a specific claim to implicate the 

privilege. Id. at 885-86. The facts in Sealed Case fell into the 

latter category.

This case, according to NACDL, fits within the former 

category because it involves lawyers acting “as prosecutors.” 

While that may be so, Sealed Case did not hold that, in any

case involving documents prepared by or for prosecutors, the 

work-product privilege could apply only if the documents had 

been created in anticipation of a specific claim. Instead, 

because Sealed Case did not involve documents created by 

prosecutors, we expressly declined to address whether “the 

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Coastal States/SafeCard specific claim test has any continued 

vitality when government lawyers act as prosecutors or 

investigators of suspected wrongdoers.” Id. at 885. And as 

we have explained, the existence (or non-existence) of a 

specific claim proved salient in those cases as a means of 

identifying whether documents had been prepared at a time 

when litigation was sufficiently in mind—i.e., whether 

“litigation was a real possibility.” Id. at 884. But in the case 

of a document like the Blue Book, prepared entirely for use in 

wholly foreseeable (even inevitable) litigation, there is no 

need to apply any specific-claim test to conclude that 

litigation is sufficiently likely to warrant application of the 

work-product privilege.

2.

NACDL next argues that the Blue Book falls outside the 

work-product privilege because it aims to advance a nonadversarial function—namely, education and training of 

prosecutors. NACDL advocates drawing a line between 

(unprivileged) documents that convey agency policy and 

(potentially privileged) documents that help the agency 

prevail in court. Whatever the validity of such a line, it would 

not advance NACDL’s cause because the Blue Book was 

designed to help federal prosecutors prevail in court on behalf 

of the government.

We have long recognized that the applicability of the 

work-product privilege can turn in significant measure on a 

document’s function. See Delaney, 826 F.2d at 127 (citing 

Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 858). And we agree with NACDL 

that materials serving no cognizable adversarial function, such 

as policy manuals, generally would not constitute work 

product. See Coastal States, 617 F.2d at 863. The Blue 

Book, however, does serve an adversarial function. 

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The Book does not merely pertain to the subject of

litigation in the abstract. Instead it addresses how attorneys 

on one side of an adversarial dispute—federal prosecutors—

should conduct litigation. It describes how to respond to the 

other side’s arguments, which cases to cite, and what material

to turn over and when to do so, among numerous other 

practical and strategic considerations. The Blue Book, for 

instance, “describes the types of claims defense counsel have 

raised and could raise regarding different discovery issues, or 

the tactics they could employ in litigation . . . and the 

arguments prosecutors can make to respond to these claims.” 

Gerson Decl. ¶ 21 (J.A. 85). 

In any event, insofar as the Blue Book might also serve 

non-adversarial functions, “a document can contain protected 

work-product material even though it serves multiple 

purposes, so long as the protected material was prepared 

because of the prospect of litigation.” Deloitte, 610 F.3d at 

138. As a result, “material generated in anticipation of 

litigation may also be used for ordinary business purposes 

without losing its protected status.” Id. In that light, any 

educational or training function the Blue Book might serve 

would not negate the document’s adversarial use in (and its 

preparation in anticipation of) litigation. The Blue Book 

therefore qualifies for the work-product privilege.

3.

NACDL also argues that a neutral recitation of legal rules 

or case law in the manner of a treatise, as opposed to a 

description of a lawyer’s litigation strategy or theory of the 

case, fails to qualify as attorney work product. That 

distinction is of no assistance to NACDL because the latter 

category more fairly describes the Blue Book than does the 

former.

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In Schiller, we found the work-product privilege 

applicable to “lawyer-prepared documents containing tips and 

advice for litigating cases under the Equal Access to Justice 

Act.” Sealed Case, 146 F.3d at 885 (describing Schiller). 

Much like the documents at issue in Schiller, the Blue Book 

contains case-handling tips and tactical advice for litigating 

discovery matters in criminal prosecutions: “in addition to 

legal analysis,” the Blue Book includes “a comprehensive set 

of strategic considerations, procedures, and practical advice 

for conducting criminal prosecutions,” much of which is 

“interspersed within the legal analysis.” Goldsmith First 

Decl. ¶ 9 (J.A. 96). 

As a result, unlike “neutral” accounts of government 

policy like the United States Attorneys’ Manual, the Blue 

Book imparts litigation strategy to government lawyers: it 

conveys “advice on criminal discovery practices, potential 

strategic and logistical concerns, interpretations of law and 

risk assessments in light of relevant legal authority, . . .

practice notes, techniques, procedures, and legal strategies 

that in-the-field prosecutors may and do employ during the 

course of criminal proceedings.” Id. ¶ 6 (J.A. 94). As with

the tips and advice in Schiller, the Blue Book thus consists of

exactly the “sort of information—prepared in anticipation of 

litigation—[which] falls within the attorney work-product 

privilege and, therefore, within [E]xemption 5.” Schiller, 964 

F.2d at 1208.

To be sure, the Blue Book contains certain information—

such as “compilations of cases,” Gerson Decl. ¶ 21 (J.A. 

85)—that may come with a seeming air of neutrality if 

considered in strict isolation. But disclosure of the publiclyavailable information a lawyer has decided to include in a 

litigation guide—such as citations of (or specific quotations 

from) particular judicial decisions and other legal sources—

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would tend to reveal the lawyer’s thoughts about which 

authorities are important and for which purposes. The Blue 

Book, for instance, does not include lists of cases in a 

vacuum. It instead “offers compilations of cases that 

prosecutors can use to support different arguments” in 

litigation as well as “[c]ases illustrating potential pitfalls that 

prosecutors should avoid” when conducting discovery. Id.

(J.A. 85-86). That sort of information squarely implicates the 

work-product privilege.

III.

Finally, NACDL argues that, even if certain portions of 

the Blue Book qualify as work product and thus are exempt 

from disclosure, DOJ must disclose any non-exempt portions. 

NACDL relies on the FOIA’s direction to agencies to disclose 

any non-exempt “portion” of a record containing exempt 

material if the non-exempt parts are “reasonably segregable.” 

5 U.S.C. § 552(b). And as we have long held, “[t]he focus of 

the FOIA is information, not documents, and an agency 

cannot justify withholding an entire document simply by 

showing that it contains some exempt material.” Mead Data, 

566 F.2d at 260.

As the district court noted, however, an agency need not 

segregate and disclose non-exempt material if a record is 

“fully protected” as work product. Nat’l Ass’n of Criminal 

Def. Lawyers, 75 F. Supp. 3d at 557 (quoting Judicial Watch,

432 F.3d at 371). In such cases, because the entire record is 

exempt from disclosure, there are no non-exempt portions left

to segregate. The district court found that the Blue Book is

fully protected as work product and thus did not undertake a 

separate segregability analysis. Id. at 561.

USCA Case #15-5051 Document #1651813 Filed: 12/20/2016 Page 17 of 24
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In cases involving voluminous or lengthy work-product 

records—the Blue Book is more than 500 pages in length—

we think it generally preferable for courts to make at least a 

preliminary assessment of the feasibility of segregating nonexempt material. When reviewing such records in camera, 

courts may look at “what proportion of the information in a 

document [appears to be] non-exempt and how that material 

is dispersed throughout the document.” Mead Data, 566 F.2d 

at 261. Material is more likely to be reasonably segregable in

longer documents with “logically divisible sections.” See id.

at 261 n.54. In such cases, courts presumably would examine

each section to determine if it might be amenable to 

segregation and disclosure. Such a determination also may be 

possible on the basis of the agency’s Vaughn index and 

affidavits, if those materials suggest that a lengthy workproduct record likely contains segregable material. 

We recognize that “FOIA places the burden of justifying 

nondisclosure on the agency seeking to withhold information, 

and this burden cannot be shifted to the courts by sweeping, 

generalized claims of exemption for documents submitted for 

in camera inspection.” Id. at 260. But when an agency has 

maintained all along that a record is “fully protected” as work 

product, its Vaughn index and affidavits may not address 

segregability. In such cases, it may be that portions of the 

record which otherwise appear to contain neutral information 

are encompassed within (and integrated with) protected work 

product and thus there is no portion that is “reasonably 

segregable.” But there may also be cases in which a record 

containing some amount of work product also contains—or at 

least appears to contain—segregable, non-exempt material 

subject to disclosure. In that circumstance, a court 

presumably would require the agency to provide “a 

description of which parts of the withheld documents are nonUSCA Case #15-5051 Document #1651813 Filed: 12/20/2016 Page 18 of 24
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exempt . . . and either disclose them or offer adequate 

justification for continuing to withhold them.” Id.

In this case, the government acknowledges that it has 

already publicized its general policy statements about federal 

prosecutors’ discovery obligations. In its response to the 

petition for rehearing filed after we issued our original (and 

hereby superseded) opinion in this case, the government 

emphasized that the Department of Justice “has made public 

the agency policy governing federal prosecutors’ discovery 

obligation,” and provided website links to pertinent sections 

of the United States Attorneys’ Manual and three memoranda 

issued by the Deputy Attorney General addressing the topic. 

Gov’t Resp. to Pet. for Reh’g 11-12. The government’s 

submissions in this case also confirm that the Blue Book 

contains a discussion of those policy statements. See Gov’t

Br. 46, 61-62. One of the government’s declarations, for 

instance, notes that Chapter 1 of the Blue Book is entitled, 

“Department of Justice Policy, Positions, and Guidance.” 

Goldsmith Second Decl. ¶ 7 (J.A. 103).

In light of the government’s submissions, we think it 

appropriate to assess whether the Blue Book contains nonexempt statements of policy that are reasonably segregable 

from the protected attorney work product and that therefore 

should be disclosed. Because the district court did not 

consider whether the Blue Book contains reasonably 

segregable statements of the government’s discovery policy, 

we remand for that court to conduct that analysis in the first 

instance. Such an analysis, we have explained, does not call 

for parsing the Blue Book “line-by-line” or segregating 

material “dispersed throughout the document.” Mead Data, 

566 F.2d at 261. Instead, the emphasis is on segregation of 

non-exempt material found in “logically divisible sections.” 

Id. at 261 n.54. If the district court concludes that the Blue 

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Book contains non-exempt and reasonably segregable 

statements of the government’s discovery policy, the court 

could then consider whether Exemption 7(E) of FOIA would 

protect any of that material from disclosure. The district court 

to this point has had no occasion to examine the government’s 

argument that Exemption 7(E) shields the Blue Book from 

disclosure.

* * * * *

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the 

district court in part and remand for an assessment of whether 

the Blue Book contains non-exempt and reasonably 

segregable statements of discovery policy. 

So ordered.

USCA Case #15-5051 Document #1651813 Filed: 12/20/2016 Page 20 of 24
SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge, with whom Senior Circuit

Judge EDWARDS joins, concurring: I concur in the decision of

the majority, not because I believe it to be the correct result, but

because I am compelled to do so by precedent. Boiling the

controversy down to its essence, the answer to one two-part

question determines the result: Does the attorney work-product

privilege protected by FOIA Exemption 5 protect only

information prepared in anticipation of litigating a specific

claim; and if not, does it extend far enough to encompass a text

prepared for the education of attorneys who may in the future be

generally involved in litigation? The majority, I believe

correctly, opines that this circuit has answered that question in

Schiller v. NLRB, 964 F.2d 1205 (D.C. Cir. 1992), and has

further restated the answer in In re Sealed Case, 146 F.3d 881,

884 (D.C. Cir. 1998). In this case, we consider a manual

prepared for internal use of the Department of Justice

concerning the important legal area of criminal litigation

discovery. The manual was prepared not for use in a specific

piece of litigation, but for the whole universe of cases that might

be encountered by the Department’s criminal attorneys. 

Likewise, in Schiller, the relevant documents at issue in a FOIA

proceeding were prepared to provide tips for the handling of

questions that might come up in Equal Access to Justice Act

litigation. 964 F.2d at 1208. In Schiller, as reiterated in In re

Sealed Case, we held that the attorney work-product privilege

adopted in Exemption 5 of the FOIA protected the disputed

document. Id. at 1208-09. Although I think the normative and

perhaps ethical implications of extending this protection to a

prosecutorial manual are sufficient to give pause, I cannot see

any legal difference between this case and Schiller which would

permit us to reach a different result.

We are bound by the prior decisions of this circuit as much

as those of the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Sierra Club v. Jackson,

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2

648 F.3d 848, 854 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (“It is fixed law that ‘this

Court is bound to follow circuit precedent until it is overruled

either by an en banc court or the Supreme Court.’” (quoting

Maxwell v. Snow, 409 F.3d 354, 358 (D.C. Cir. 2005)). Schiller,

as restated in Sealed Case, held that we found the work-product

privilege applicable to “lawyer-prepared documents containing

tips and advice for litigating cases under the Equal Access to

Justice Act.” Sealed Case, 146 F.3d at 885 (analyzing and

restating Schiller). Unless and until the Supreme Court or an en

banc decision by this court overrules or modifies Schiller, we

must enter decisions consistent with that holding. I hope to see

the day when such a reversal or modification occurs, for more

than one reason.

First, I believe that Schiller was wrongly decided in the first

instance. As the majority notes, the purpose in the privilege

adopted into Exemption 5 is “to protect ‘the integrity of the

adversary trial process itself.’” Maj. Op. at 5 (quoting Jordan v.

Dep’t of Justice, 591 F.2d 753, 775 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (en banc)). 

That purpose is served by allowing a litigating attorney “a ‘zone

of privacy’ within which to think, plan, weigh facts and

evidence . . . .” Coastal States Gas Corp. v. Dep’t of Energy,

617 F.2d 854, 864 (D.C. Cir. 1980). That goal is accomplished

by an exemption which protects from disclosure the litigation

decisions and related information in the handling of specific

litigation. I grant that it is possible to interpret Exemption 5

broadly; that does not mean it is appropriate to do so. The

exemptions to FOIA are “explicitly made exclusive . . . and must

be ‘narrowly construed.’” Milner v. Dep’t of Navy, 562 U.S.

562, 565 (2011) (quoting FBI v. Abramson, 456 U.S. 615, 630

(1982) (other citations and internal quotations omitted)). 

Furthermore, applying the broad construction of Schiller to

the case before us is inconsistent both with the statutory purpose

of FOIA and the longstanding values of justice in the United

USCA Case #15-5051 Document #1651813 Filed: 12/20/2016 Page 22 of 24
3

States. The purpose of the Freedom of Information Act is to

serve “the citizens’ right to be informed about what their

government is up to.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm.

for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 773 (1989) (internal

quotation marks omitted). There is no area in which it is more

important for the citizens to know what their government is up

to than the activity of the Department of Justice in criminally

investigating and prosecuting the people. The government

certainly has the power to claim a FOIA exemption to hide its

internal manuals describing how it goes about that awesome

undertaking. But if it chooses to exercise that power, then the

people might be forgiven for cynically asking “what is it you

have to hide?”

Reflecting on the consistency of Schiller’s interpretation of

Exemption 5 with the original statutory purposes, one may

recall, as does the majority, that the exemption was to protect

attorneys in litigation as under the privilege traditionally

afforded in litigation itself. I cannot help but wonder if an

insurance defense attorney had written a secret treatise passed

around among his bar on how to defend—for

example—defective product cases, would we, if that treatise

became relevant in specific litigation, afford the protection of

the attorney-client privilege to a document not prepared for a

particular client or a particular case, but only to educate

attorneys of a particular sort in the litigation of a particular kind

of case? I think not. But even if we did, I do not think this

would justify stretching the FOIA exemption to the point of

protecting the departmental tactics and strategies in criminal

prosecution from discovery by the citizenry. I cannot help but

recall the words of Justice Sutherland for the Supreme Court in

Berger v. United States:

The United States Attorney is the representative not of an

ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose

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4

obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its

obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in

a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that

justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very

definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of

which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He

may prosecute with earnestness and vigor–indeed, he

should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is

not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to

refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a

wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means

to bring about a just one.

295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935). 

It is often said that justice must not only be done, it must be

seen to be done. Likewise, the conduct with the U.S. Attorney

must not only be above board, it must be seen to be above board. 

If the people cannot see it at all, then they cannot see it to be

appropriate, or more is the pity, to be inappropriate. I hope that

we shall, in spite of Schiller, someday see the day when the

people can see the operations of their Department of Justice.

In short, I join the judgment of the majority, not because I

want to, but because I have to.

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