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Unit: $U92

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 399 (1998)

409

Opinion of the Court

nal and civil cases, and only one commentator ventures such
a suggestion, see Mueller & Kirkpatrick, supra, at 380–381.
In any event, a client may not know at the time he discloses
information to his attorney whether it will later be relevant
to a civil or a criminal matter, let alone whether it will be of
substantial importance. Balancing ex post the importance
of the information against client interests, even limited to
criminal cases, introduces substantial uncertainty into the
privilege’s application. For just that reason, we have re-
jected use of a balancing test in deﬁning the contours of the
privilege. See Upjohn, 449 U. S., at 393; Jaffee, supra, at
17–18.

In a similar vein, the Independent Counsel argues that
existing exceptions to the privilege, such as the crime-fraud
exception and the testamentary exception, make the impact
of one more exception marginal. However, these exceptions
do not demonstrate that the impact of a posthumous excep-
tion would be insigniﬁcant, and there is little empirical evi-
dence on this point.4 The established exceptions are con-

4 Empirical evidence on the privilege is limited. Three studies do not
reach ﬁrm conclusions on whether limiting the privilege would discourage
full and frank communication. Alexander, The Corporate Attorney Client
Privilege: A Study of the Participants, 63 St. John’s L. Rev. 191 (1989);
Zacharias, Rethinking Conﬁdentiality, 74 Iowa L. Rev. 352 (1989); Com-
ment, Functional Overlap Between the Lawyer and Other Professionals:
Its Implications for the Privileged Communications Doctrine, 71 Yale L. J.
1226 (1962). These articles note that clients are often uninformed or mis-
taken about the privilege, but suggest that a substantial number of clients
and attorneys think the privilege encourages candor. Two of the articles
conclude that a substantial number of clients and attorneys think the privi-
lege enhances open communication, Alexander, supra, at 244–246, 261, and
that the absence of a privilege would be detrimental to such communica-
tion, Comment, 71 Yale L. J., supra, at 1236. The third article suggests
instead that while the privilege is perceived as important to open com-
munication,
limited exceptions to the privilege might not discourage
such communication, Zacharias, supra, at 382, 386. Similarly, relatively
few court decisions discuss the impact of the privilege’s application after
death. This may reﬂect the general assumption that the privilege sur-