MEMORANDUM ORDER
Defendants challenge the assertion by plaintiffs of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection with respect to certain otherwise responsive documents and testimony sought by defendants from the public relations firm of Robinson Lerer & Montgomery (“RLM”) and from an RLM employee, Donald Nathan. The Court, having considered the parties’ letter-briefs (including an unauthorized second brief from plaintiffs, which the Court has nevertheless considered) and having reviewed in camera, the documents withheld from defendants, denies plaintiffs’ assertion of attorney-client privilege and sustains in part and denies in part plaintiffs’ assertion of work product protection, for the reasons that follow.
In May, 2000, in anticipation of filing the instant lawsuit, plaintiffs’ counsel, the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP (“BSF”), retained RLM to act “as a consultant to [BSF] for certain communications services in connection with [BSF’s] representation of Calvin Klein, Inc.” See Letter dated May 19, 2000 from Patrick S. Gallagher, Chief Financial Officer of RLM, to Jonathan D. Schiller, Esq. of BSF. At the time, RLM was already working directly for plaintiff Calvin Klein, Inc. (“CKI”) pursuant to an agreement dated September 10, 1999. Id.
While defendants contend that BSF retained RLM “to wage a press war against the defendant,” see Defendants’ Letter Brief dated November 30, 2000, at 1, plaintiffs contend that RLM’s retention served more defensive purposes, ie., to help BSF “to understand the possible reaction of OKI’s constituencies to the matters that would arise in the litigation, to provide legal advice to CKI, and to assure that the media crisis that would ensue — including responses to requests by the media about the law suit and the overall dispute between the companies'— would be handled responsibly____” See Plaintiffs’ Letter Brief dated November 29, 2000, at 3. None of these vague and largely rhetorical contentions by the respective parties is particularly helpful to assessing the purpose of the documents here in issue, many of which appear on their face to be routine suggestions from a public relations firm as to how to put the “spin” most favorable to CKI on successive developments in the ongoing litigation. In any event, however, no matter how these documents are viewed, none qualifies for the protection of the attorney client privilege, for at least three reasons.
First, and foremost, few, if any, of the documents in issue appear to contain or reveal confidential communications from the underlying client, CKI, made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. Yet it is only such communications that the attorney-client privilege ultimately protects. See, e.g., United States v. Kovel,
Second, even assuming arguendo that somewhere hidden in the voluminous documents here in issue are nuggets of client confidential communications that were originally made for the purpose of seeking legal advice, their disclosure to RLM waives the privilege, since inspection of the documents here in question clearly establishes that RLM, far from serving the kind of “translator” function served by the accountant in Kovel, supra, is, at most, simply providing ordinary public relations advice so far as the documents here in question are concerned. Indeed, even RLM’s own “Account Activity Report” to BSF for the period from May 27, 2000 to October 31, 2000 (item 38 on the privilege log, but only slightly redacted) shows that much of RLM’s services for BSF consisted of such activities as reviewing press coverage, making calls to various media to comment on developments in the litigation,
Third, it must not be forgotten that the attorney-client privilege, like all evidentiary privileges, stands in derogation of the search for truth so essential to the effective operation of any system of justice: therefore, the privilege must be narrowly construed. See, e.g., United States v. Nixon,
Turning to the assertion of “work product,” it is obvious that as a general matter public relations advice, even if it bears on anticipated litigation, falls outside the ambit of protection of the so-called “work product” doctrine embodied in Rule 26(b)(3), Fed.R.Civ.P. That is because the purpose of the rule is to provide a zone of privacy for strategizing about the conduct of litigation itself, not for strategizing about the effects of the litigation on the client’s customers, the media, or on the public generally. See United States v. Nobles,
It does .not follow, however, that an otherwise valid assertion of work-product protection is waived with respect to an attorney’s own work-product simply because the attorney provides the work-product to a public relations consultant whom he has hired and who maintains the attorney’s work-product in confidence. See, e.g., In re Pfizer Inc. Secs. Litig.,
From the foregoing analysis, it also follows that the directions given to RLM’s employee, Donald Nathan, not to answer certain questions propounded at pages 21-22 and 39-40 of his deposition must be overruled. The similar direction given at page 10 of the deposition is, however, sustained.
In sum, plaintiffs are hereby ordered to furnish to defense counsel, by no later than December 7, 2000, unredacted copies of all documents on the RLM privilege log except those denominated as falling within categories 1, 2, 3, 7, 10,11, 12,19, 27, and 29 of that log; and RLM is hereby ordered to make Donald Nathan available, by no later than December 8, 2000, for a telephonic continuation of his deposition, not to exceed 20 minutes, for the purposes of answering the questions the witness was directed not to answer at pages 21-22 and 39-40 of his deposition, as well as any follow-up questions reasonably related thereto.
SO ORDERED.
Notes
. Although plaintiffs assert that the decision in H.W. Carter & Sons, Inc. v. The William Carter Co.,