PwC – Federal Court of Australia finds that privilege applied to communications made or received by a multi-disciplinary partnership for the “dominant purpose” of legal advice

PwC Australia was a multi-disciplinary partnership. The engagement partner for the JBS Australia group was a lawyer, and the client-servicing team also included non-lawyers.

The Commissioner of Taxation issued notices to produce documents to that engagement partner and some of the group companies, as to which legal professional privilege was claimed over approximately 44,000 documents, with the Commissioner disputing such claims over approximately 15,500 documents.

Moshinsky J indicated that he was satisfied that a lawyer-client relationship existed between the engagement partner (along with some of the other PwC lawyers) and the client group, so that is was necessary to consider, on a document-by-document basis, whether the sample documents provided to him were subject to legal professional privilege, which turned in each case on whether they were “communications made for the dominant purpose of giving or receiving legal advice.”

Paragraphs 37 to 932 of his 934-paragraph decision are currently redacted, and he will release a less redacted decision after reviewing submissions on what should continue to be redacted.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Commissioner of Taxation v PricewaterhouseCoopers, [2022] FCA 278 under s. 232(1) – solicitor-client privilege.