The US Department of Justice has accused Google of coaching its staff on the best way to defend enterprise communications from discovery in circumstances of authorized disputes “by using false requests for legal advice.” As Axios reports, the DOJ has instructed the choose overseeing its antitrust case towards the tech big that Google instructs staff so as to add in-house legal professionals to written communication, apply attorney-client privilege labels to them and make a request for authorized recommendation even when it isn’t wanted. The division is now asking the choose to sanction the corporate “for its extensive and intentional efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide business documents relevant” to the case.

In the brief (PDF) its legal professionals wrote for the choose, the DOJ mentioned Google refers back to the follow as “Communicate with Care” and that it first began no later than 2015. New staff are reportedly directed to comply with the follow with out dialogue on whether or not it ought to solely be used when authorized recommendation is really wanted. In addition, Google allegedly offered the identical coaching to groups dealing with search-distribution for the division’s (and different authorities’) antitrust circumstances. 

Google particularly instructed these groups to comply with the follow for any written communication containing revenue-sharing agreements and cellular utility distribution agreements, based mostly on the presentation slides the DOJ included in its transient. Those agreements are central to the case. If you may recall, the DOJ accused Google of getting an unfair monopoly over search and search-related promoting in its 2020 antitrust lawsuit. It additionally questioned its phrases for Android machine producers that power them to pre-load Google apps and set Google because the default search engine. 

According to the DOJ, statements similar to “adding legal” or “adding [attorney] for legal advice” seem in 1000’s of Google paperwork. These emails apparently lacked any particular request for recommendation and attorneys hardly ever reply to them. In the transient, the division mentioned the follow “pervades the entire company” and is getting used even by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

The DOJ is now asking the court docket to carry Google’s conduct as sanctionable and to order it to instantly produce “all withheld or redacted emails where no attorney responded to the purported request for legal advice.”

Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo McAlister defended the corporate in an announcement despatched to Axios, nevertheless, calling the allegations “flatly wrong.” McAlister mentioned:

“Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation, and suggestions to the contrary are flatly wrong. Just like other American companies, we educate our employees about legal privilege and when to seek legal advice. And we have produced over four million documents to the DOJ in this case alone — including many that employees had considered potentially privileged.”