Attorney-client privileged communications

Identifies documents containing references to attorney-client privileged communications in international contexts. These are communications potentially subject to legal privilege; the category is not blanket personally identifiable information, and a match does not guarantee privilege applies.

Type

regex

Engine

boost_regex

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

category-aware structural regex with anchor and context constraints replaces phrase-only detection. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Topic false positive

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

GDPR, AML/CTF Act (Cth), HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth)

Data categories

legal

Scope

wide

Risk rating

8

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:attorney[\s-]+client\s+privileged\s+communications|attorney[\s-]+client\s+privilege|legal\s+professional\s+privilege|privileged\s+and\s+confidential|work\s+product\s+doctrine|solicitor[\s-]+client\s+privilege|litigation\s+privilege|without\s+prejudice|legal\s+hold|privilege\s+log|confidential\s+legal|protected\s+communication)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

attorney-client privileged communications, attorney, client, privileged, communications, corporate, legal, governance, PRIVILEGED, ATTORNEY-CLIENT, WORK PRODUCT, CONFIDENTIAL, PROTECTED, data record, database record, record set, data extract, data export, database table, spreadsheet (+17 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• attorney-client privileged communications — Primary topic phrase match
• attorney-client privilege — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
• legal professional privilege — Alternative topic phrase match
• privileged and confidential — Additional topic phrase match

Should not match

• unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
• placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
• board policy — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match

Known false positives

• Common words and phrases related to attorney-client privileged communications appearing in policy documents, training materials, HR templates, or compliance guidelines without actual personal data. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window to confirm sensitive data context rather than general discussion.
• In English (as the primary international business language), similar terminology used in formal or administrative contexts (education, professional documentation) that does not constitute sensitive data collection. Mitigation: Layer with additional contextual signals such as structured identifiers, form fields, or database column headers to distinguish sensitive records from general references.
• High-frequency pattern matches in large document corpora due to broad regex anchors. Expected match rate is significantly higher than specific identifier patterns. Mitigation: Tune confidence thresholds for bulk scanning. Consider using this pattern primarily as a pre-filter with secondary validation.

References

• https://www.ato.gov.au/about-ato/commitments-and-reporting/in-detail/information-gathering/legal-professional-privilege
• https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=SAV/LPPGLC/00001