The Importance of Attorney-Client Privilege

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I wanted to say before I get into it today, thank you for whoever sent me this hat.

For those listening, it says I identify as vaccinated and I have only gotten one weird look so far that I can remember.

I haven't worn it a lot, so we'll see what happens, but it is being used, so I appreciate whoever sent that to me. Hard to know where to start.

Let's do this. I'm gonna start with the website today. I'm gonna show you some things. For those who haven't been there, this is my website, worldviewconversation .com

is where you can find it. I was gonna try to get the domain name for johnharris .com and I looked it up, it's a bodybuilder named

John Harris, and I was like, huh. So I sent it to my wife and I'm like, hey, did you see my new website? And she thought that was kind of funny, but it's not me, definitely not me.

But the worldviewconversation .com website is where you can find me, and all the social media links are there for those who haven't seen this.

At the bottom, you can see where I am on social media. You can, if you wanna support, there's a support tab.

I'm gonna show you a few of these other tabs, though. If you wanna get books, that's the first tab, books. And here's the two

I've written on the social justice movement. You can also go and get A .D. Roble's Social Justice Pharisees.

I still have a few hundred copies of that. I wanted to just say thank you to everyone who has bought the book, whether on Amazon or through myself directly, and especially for those who have reviewed it online, whether that's

Goodreads or Amazon, it really helps. And I know sometimes people are wondering, what can

I do, how can I help? How can I really put a dent in what's happening? Well, this is one of the things you can do. If you read the book, you can go and you can rate it on various platforms.

Go to Goodreads, go to Amazon. I don't know if it's available on barnesandnoble .com yet.

You can probably rate it on Google. But wherever you bought it, especially, rate it there.

Even if you bought it through me, you can still go on Amazon and you can leave a rating. And so I'd appreciate that.

That actually helps quite a bit. Do a review of it, do a video of it or something on your social media post that you really enjoyed it, that kind of thing.

It does help, get it out there. And then I wanted to show you this. This is the reason I came here more than anything else.

I am gonna be on the road, and these are, there's a few pending things, but these are the confirmed dates for October through December, 2021.

I still have some people I'm gonna contact for next year. There's some dates for next year. And I know some of you have applied to have me come and I am, there's

I think maybe two or three that I still need to call, but those are all for next year. So for this year, what we have so far is

Thursday, October 21st, I'll be in DeForest, Wisconsin at the DeForest Evangelical Free Church. You can contact them, 6 .30

p .m., that's next week. Anyone who's in the DeForest, Wisconsin area would love to see you.

Then October 23rd, Syracuse Baptist Church in Syracuse, Indiana for the Jesus and Politics Conference.

You can contact Syracuse Baptist Church for more info. Wednesday, October 27th,

I'm gonna be at OCPAC, and they meet at the Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association. You can go online, look up OCPAC, O -C -P -A -C, and this is more of a political venue, but again, talking about the book, talking about social justice, would love to meet you.

And then I'll be at City Elders the next day at 8 a .m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you can go to cityelders .com

to check that out. I will be in Grant, New Nebraska, sorry.

For a second, I was like, wait a minute, what state is that again? It's Nebraska, NE's Nebraska.

I'm like, ME, that would be Maine. That's not North Dakota, that's ND's. No, no, NE's Nebraska.

So I'll be there, and I think I'm flying in to Denver to get there.

That's like the closest airport, so this is out kind of in the country is my understanding, but if you're anywhere near there, Grant, Nebraska, Christianity and Social Justice Conference, I'm gonna be speaking there a lot on Saturday and Sunday of the weekend of November 6th and 7th, and then of course,

December 10th through 12th, I'll be at Providence Baptist Church, at least somewhere in there, for they're having a conference as well.

I'm not sure what the title is yet, but that's in New York City. So if you're anywhere near any of these locations, would love to chat with you, would love to see you, and I'll certainly do an autograph signing of the book and put a little note in there for you.

So there you go. And if there's anyone, by the way, in between some of these dates, like I'll give you an example.

Like, okay, so I'll be in Indiana, right, on October 23rd, but then the next engagement that I'm speaking at is the 27th.

I don't know if it's worth it for me to come all the way back to upstate New York, then to drive all the way out to Oklahoma.

I'm not flying for that one. So, you know, hey, if there's anyone between Indiana and Oklahoma, and you wanna have me come and talk or whatever, let me know, you know, give, and how do you let me know?

Well, you can go here at the top of the worldviewconversation .com website, there's a tab, and you can go to Book John.

It's at the top right. Click on that, and when it loads, it's gonna take you to an event form.

And that's how you get in touch with me, and that's how you can communicate with me to ask me to come, and I would love to come and help really educate your church or whatever group it is on social justice, the threat it is to the gospel.

I mean, look, I'll do political events, but you're not, I'm gonna talk about the gospel. I'm gonna preach it.

So just be prepared for that. And yeah, so that's where you can find me.

Let's see, I wanna show you one other thing. So there's a tab here, Churches. If you click on Churches, it's gonna take you to discerningchristians .com.

And my understanding is, in fact, I haven't really tried this yet. I'll try it right now, that you can actually apply.

Let's see, I'll log in myself. Now I'm logged in. And so you can go here, you can set your preferences to whatever you want, as far as denominational preferences, all that.

And there's all kinds of things here. Well, my understanding is there is, you can type in a pastoral candidate.

There is a new position. So you can be a layman, deacon, pastor, pastoral candidate. If you put in pastoral candidate and submit it, then up here on the top right, there's candidates.

Look at this, check this out. There are all these pastoral candidates. If you are, look, this is amazing.

If you're a member of discerningchristians .com, then you can go and see the pastoral candidates, people who want to pastor a church.

If your church is looking for a pastor, you want someone who's not a social justice activist, but a actual biblical pastor, check this out.

Go to discerningchristians .com. Go to candidates, click on one of them. Let's click on this one, Kyle Witt.

Remember Kyle Witt? He's the one that did the whistleblowing video on NAM. Well, he's looking for a church. He can't do it with NAM.

So how is he gonna pastor? Well, you click on it, it'll take you to his profile. He hasn't uploaded a picture, but he does have an email.

So why don't you email him? Email him. If you're a church, you're looking for a pastor, email the guy, email any of these guys, and just ask him, hey, where are you at?

There's a bunch of them up here already. And I didn't even realize this until I looked here.

So this is a tool. I haven't said anything about this yet, but without me even saying anything, there's a number of them already up here.

So please check that out. Go to discerningchristians .com.

It's easy to make a website, to make a profile, and then you'll have a map. And on this map, it's so helpful, guys.

It's gonna show you. It's taking me to kind of where I am. It's gonna show you, hey, there's someone in the area who's a member, and you can connect with them.

Or here's a church over here that agrees with the statement of faith at discerningchristians .com.

Here's another church over here. Let's just, for the sake of showing everyone how it works, let's say you live in, oh,

I don't know, out in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And you wanna find a church there.

Refresh search results. Oh, man, there's a bunch of churches. Zoom in. We got people. We got some churches here.

We got the Heritage Baptist Church. We have Fairview Baptist Church. Tulsa's got a church.

Christ Reform Church. So this is what you do. And if you're in an area you know of a good church, it's not up there, add it.

You can do that. You can go here to the profile, and right here where it says

Create an Organization, Create an Organization, and you can put in everything. Now, you might need to manually enter the coordinates for it.

That's possible. So if you put in Grace Bible Church, which is, it's already on there.

So it'll come up with a number. Now, if yours doesn't come up there, then you're going to have to manually enter it.

So you click on Manual Entry, and you're gonna have to find out the latitude and longitude. You can do that. There's tools online.

You can type in an address and find out the latitude and longitude. Put all that info, email, website, description, what your title is.

You might just be a layman putting it on the map. And that's it. Boom. Now, my understanding is, as well, if there's a church profile, let me just show you this real quick.

So if you go to Grace Bible Church here, if you want to add a position, if you're looking for, you know, we need an associate pastor here or something, or we're looking for, my understanding is you can, let's see here.

Okay, you can put an open position up here and show that your church is open. You, associate pastor, we need, or like youth pastor, let's say.

So type in youth pastor, if that's what your church is looking for, for the sake of argument, then go down here.

It's open. And then submit. After you've put in the description of the job and everything, and people can see, if they look up your church, hey, there's an open position there.

This is the way, everyone, that we are going to get around some of the things going on.

See if I can go back to, here we go. This is the way we're going to get around the institutions and some of the things that are actually going on at them.

So you don't have to just find the latest person who came out of a certain seminary.

You can go and you can yourself find, go around all that.

Find the cream of the crop. Find the pastoral candidates that are already against the social justice movement.

Look at the statement of faith. We tried to make it tight and as simple as possible. So there you go. We'll talk more about that later.

Let's get into the topic for today though. And that is attorney -client privilege. And the reason

I'm doing this is because I got an email last night from someone who said, hey, basically, it's a very nice email, but why don't you explain the reason behind attorney -client privilege?

And I just thought, I kind of took it for granted. I thought, well, everyone kind of understands that that's just about privacy. You have that with your doctor, in a sense, but you have it with your lawyer, anyone who's an advocate for you, that they should be trustworthy.

And I just kind of took that for granted. And I realized, well, most people don't really know why that is in place.

So why don't we go over it? Why don't we talk about it? And at first, I think I emailed the person back. I'm like,

I'm not probably gonna talk about this anymore cause I'm done with the executive committee stuff for now. But the more I thought about it,

I was like, you know, this would be a good episode. Let's talk about attorney -client privilege. So that's what we're gonna do. So the title is

The Importance of Attorney -Client Privilege and why what the SBC executive committee is doing is terrible.

And so, can you see, I'm a little biased on this. I think what they did is awful by waiving attorney -client privilege and letting the

Me Too movement basically just come in and go after anyone on the executive committee for anything they've said and to attorneys in closed door meetings and these kinds of things.

Now, we're gonna talk about the weaknesses of this a little bit, but let's just set the foundation first. The Me Too movement has attacked a number of things legally.

One, and I'll just give you a few of those. The due process, innocent until proven guilty. They attack this.

Believe women, right? They claim to have an abuse story, even if it's 20 years ago.

The statute of limitations is gone. They need to testify in Congress, right? They should be believed.

And we've seen this over and over where there's no evidence or little evidence or it's disputed, but you have to believe the victim.

And if you don't, you're insensitive. You're unkind. You're mean. We saw the way this worked with the Paige Patterson situation.

This is the way they operate. And sadly, the conservatives don't seem to know what to do.

And I've noticed this too, among especially older gentlemen, really. It's gentlemen, especially older Southerners.

They don't seem to wanna defend themselves. They seem to want to, and it's not just Southerners, but I've just particularly noticed it there.

They think that that shouldn't be something they have to do, that their good name should speak for itself.

And they're just completely steamrolled by today's Me Too movement. And not just me, the

Me Too movement, it's accusations of racism and all kinds of other things. But we live in a different world now, and you kind of have to defend yourself a little bit.

I've learned that lesson a little bit the hard way myself. I thought, oh, people aren't gonna believe some of the things that are said about me sometimes.

And I'm like, oh my goodness. It's amazing how much people will believe and how fast rumors do spread.

So sometimes you do have to step out there and correct the record a little bit. But the

Me Too movement attacks this idea of innocent until proven guilty. The laws against adultery also.

Russell Fuller talked about this. I thought that was a brilliant observation. Adultery, consensual adultery or fornication is now it's abuse.

Because if there's a power relationship difference, if there's like a man and a woman, and the man's more muscular and more powerful or has a position that's over the woman, she's the secretary or something, well, then it's abuse.

It's not adultery. Well, look, it could be both. Or it could be just adultery, plain old adultery.

Someone fell to temptation, and now they're claiming it's abuse later. And everyone goes along and believes that because, well, there was a power differentiation.

I mean, look, their boss asked them to do this. So, I mean, you're not supposed to say no to your boss. Well, yes, you are.

If it goes against the law of God and your conscience, you can say no. But the assumption is that, well, there's a power relationship.

So it's abuse, even if it was consensual. And then, of course, equality before the law is attacked by the

Me Too movement. And that goes along sort of the same thing here. The power relationships.

If you are a male, you are not as equal as a female who's testifying against a male in court.

There are certain classes of people that are to be believed over others. So you don't have equality before the law. You're supposed to favor certain social locations.

Now, let's get into the EC stuff because this is a different attack.

This is an attack on attorney -client privilege. We read the Gunther, Jordan, and Price letter on October 11th to the trustees of the executive committee, most notably to Ronnie Floyd, basically saying, look, we're not gonna accept this risk.

This is wrong. So really, maybe two things there. This is wrong to waive the attorney -client privilege, and we can't accept this risk.

So we're moving on. We've represented you for almost six decades, and we're done. And this is terrible.

This is awful that this would happen. Very bad sign for the Southern Baptist Convention. I can't even emphasize how bad this is.

The bigwigs are saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. I don't even know what to say other than there's a delusional thinking going on there.

So what is attorney -client privilege? Why attorney -client privilege? What's the point? Isn't this a way to cover up things?

Here's from an article by Jeffrey Hazard, 1978 California Law Review. The attorney -client privilege may well be the pivotal element of the modern

American lawyer's professional functions. It is considered indispensable to the lawyer's function as an advocate on the theory that the advocate can adequately prepare a case, only if the client is free to disclose everything bad as well as good.

The privilege is also considered necessary to the lawyer's function as a confidential counselor in law on the similar theory that the legal counselor can properly advise the client what to do only if the client is free to make full disclosure.

So in other words, if you are a client, you need a lawyer, you need to be able to tell the lawyer everything, things that might be embarrassing to you, things that might be incriminating or embarrassing to others who are not on trial, things that are of a private nature that need to remain private.

You need to be able to tell your attorney all of these things, so they, because you don't know the law, they know the law, and they will be able to navigate specifically how to make your defense and what you're guilty for, what you're not guilty for, what the strongest argument is, and this ensures, this is supposed to ensure that justice is as much, and we don't have a perfect world, right, but justice is carried out to the best way we can.

So you have two sides duking it out with the best argument to protect the person and also hopefully the best arguments against the person by the prosecution.

And so this is a trust relationship that you have with an attorney. You have similar relationships with your doctor.

I'll show that in a second. And really one of the things, and I think this is what we can't miss, it is, so the attorney is an extension of yourself.

You're the one who's being, you're the one being defended, right? And you don't know the law.

You can't navigate it as well as your attorney. You're paying your attorney for a service. There's a relationship here of authority.

And the authority is, the attorney's an authority on the law, but you're an authority over the attorney. He's working or she's working for you if you are the one on trial.

So the whole idea behind this is there should be a trust relationship between you and the attorney, because the attorney in a sense is acting on your behalf, is an extension of you, is being paid by you.

You are actually the boss. You, in a way, you are the client, but you are the one that is in charge of your case.

And the attorney is the one you're trusting to do the best job they possibly can for you.

And so this gets into business relationships. So you could even look at the relationship in scripture often given between masters and slaves in a way.

And I'm not saying the attorney's a slave in every sense of the word, and you're a master in every sense of the word, but I'm saying that the principles that are at work there would apply here.

Or in the parables of Jesus with business owners, landowners, hiring out laborers, they have a certain level of authority.

And so there's a certain level of authority that a client has with an attorney.

And part of that is being able to gain the trust of the attorney, to have that secured so that you can make the best possible defense on your behalf without incriminating someone who's innocent, without bringing out embarrassing situations that don't need to be out there, and without prejudicing the jury.

If there's a jury involved or the judge, you don't wanna bring out information that would prejudice them against you, possibly if it's unnecessary.

So that's the whole kind of reasoning behind this. Jay Wigmore, an attorney on attorney -client privilege, he was a famous legal scholar.

He said, the history of this privilege goes back to the reign of Elizabeth. So this is in England, where the privilege already appears as unquestioned.

The policy of the privilege has been plainly grounded since the latter part of the 1700s. In order to promote freedom of consultation of legal advisors by clients, the apprehension of compelled disclosure by the legal advisors must be removed.

And hence the law must prohibit such disclosure except on the client's consent. So the apprehension of compelled disclosure by the legal advisors must be removed.

So in other words, if you're gonna, you wanna be honest. If you don't know how to navigate the law, if you don't know what it actually says, you don't know, you're flying blind here.

The lawyers need to be your eyes. So they need to know what they're up against. Is there a mountain ahead? What's in their flight path so they can try to land this plane?

And so that's, you need to be able to tell them there's a mountain over here, avoid that. Meanwhile, the prosecution's trying to shoot you down.

So that's the whole kind of reason behind this. Here's some examples. This is from California.

That's why I put the Golden Gate Bridge there. California code, subject to section 912 and except as otherwise provided in this article, the client, whether or not a party, has a privilege to refuse or disclose and to prevent another from disclosing a confidential communication between client and lawyer if the privilege is claimed by the holder of the privilege, a person who is authorized to claim the privilege by the holder of the privilege or the person who was the lawyer at the time of the confidential communication.

Such person may not claim the privilege if there is no holder of privilege. Okay, so this is a rehash of what we've already talked about, but this is the language in a state code.

This is showing you how this actually makes its way, how it applies in a legal situation. It also says there is no privilege under this article if the services of a lawyer were sought to obtain to enable or aid anyone to commit or plan to commit a crime or a fraud.

Now, this is interesting. It also says there is no privilege under this article if the lawyer reasonably believes that the disclosure of any confidential communication relating to the representation of a client is necessary to prevent a criminal act that the lawyer reasonably believes is likely to result in the death of or a substantial bodily harm to an individual.

What's the point of this, John? Well, the point of this is there are limitations to attorney -client privilege.

In other words, there should be trust there, but if the client gives information to the attorney that says, look, there's a crime that's gonna be committed, someone's gonna get hurt, there's a fraud that's going to happen, a law's gonna be broken, the attorney then, this doesn't protect the attorney anymore.

This is outside the scope of attorney -client privilege. They need to go report that, okay? So this is part of what people need to understand.

There's already a precedent for limiting this to prevent further illegal activity and harm.

Same thing applies to physicians, by the way. This is California Code Article 6. There is no privilege under this article if the services of the physician were sought to obtain to enable or aid anyone to commit or plan to commit a crime or a tort or to escape detection, et cetera.

So this is, it's very similar, the relationship you have with your doctor, the relationship you have with your attorney.

It is, they are advocates. So what are some biblical principles that apply to this?

Well, let me give you a few. Proverbs 11, 13, the one who goes about as a slanderer reveals secrets, but one who is trustworthy conceals a matter.

So in the course of giving information to an attorney, you're gonna tell them a lot of things. Some things that, you know, they may not be popular.

Things that may be of a private nature, things that if they were known to the jury or to the public even, it would create a bad name for you and there's no reason to let them out, but they might be indirectly related to the case.

The attorney needs to know about these things, to know whether they are actually substantial or whether they're important to the case or not.

And so this is where this applies. If someone were to just go about and reveal things that are supposed to be kept secret, then they'd be a slanderer.

They, it's a trustworthy person who conceals a matter. There is a time for concealing a matter.

Yes, there's going to be a day when truth is shouted from the rooftops, when every hidden thing is exposed. Today is not that day.

So 1 Corinthians 4, 2, here's another one. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.

Now this is not an application of to barristers, lawyers, attorneys. This is talking about those who are stewards of the gospel.

Paul's talking about himself, but there, what you see in this verse is just a general quality of trustworthiness is a desirable trait that we find throughout scripture.

There's one example of it, there's many. And then Exodus 23, 7, keep far from a false charge and do not kill the innocent or the righteous for I will not acquit the guilty.

There are situations in which there are people not on trial who you could get in trouble or you could put into embarrassing situations if certain things are revealed that should not be revealed.

And so I think this would apply in this situation to an extent that you don't want to kill an innocent person.

You don't want to prejudice a jury. You don't want to prejudice a judge with information that's extraneous. In the case, in this situation with the

SBC, that's exactly I think what's about to happen possibly is they are putting themselves in a situation where they're under the microscope of the

Me Too movement and the social justice advocates. And some of these communications that have taken place from various executive committee members regarding alleged abuse cases, some of them legitimate, perhaps, some of them not, who knows, on some of them,

I don't know, but just even the questions that have been asked and the situations that these specific situations and everything that was said around them, these could be used, these could be mined for, we already saw this happen actually.

Russell Moore, it wasn't him directly, it was someone under him, but they released MP3 recordings, just snippets.

It wasn't the whole recordings of certain people. I think Mike Stone was one of them. Saying things that were construed in a very unfavorable way may have cost

Mike Stone the election last June at the Southern Baptist Convention. And these are the kinds of things that can happen when you waive attorney -client privilege, when all of this stuff can be mined for.

Oh my goodness, Mike Stone asked this question. Isn't that so insensitive? He's not believing women, because the standard is so off right now.

It's just so unbiblical and so off, but it can hurt you personally, if people know.

These are the kinds of things you're asking, whether or not someone actually is guilty, is there evidence, that kind of thing. All right, Exodus 1,

Joshua 2, et cetera. In the case of unjust magistrates, so what do you do about the Hebrew midwives?

What do you do about Rahab and hiding spies? These are the kinds of things, when the civil magistrate is asking for information, pretend the situations were a little different and they had attorneys representing them.

What are the attorneys supposed to do in these situations? Should they just reveal? Well, let me just reveal everything that Rahab said, everything that the midwives said.

No, because there's an unjust standard that the pressure is to meet this unjust standard.

And so, there are situations like this. And I think that's actually, in some ways, that's kind of what's going on now, at least with public opinion.

There's an unjust standard that needs to be met. And so, there may be a reason to hide some of the things that some of these executive committee members have asked or said.

And then in the case of competing authorities, when you have the government says, hey, this is wrong. And furthermore, the

Bible says this is wrong, murder's wrong, to make an example. And then your client who you're working for, if you're a lawyer, says, hide this.

What do you do in that situation? Well, as I already explained, this is not necessary, this is not an absolute thing.

Attorney -client privilege is not absolute. It is a working relationship you're to have with someone. And in the case of obeying the law of God, you obey the law of God.

In the case of preventing a crime, you prevent the crime. So, you need to, as a lawyer or an attorney, you need to realize there's different authorities that you are under, and they're not just one.

So, this is not an absolute. Attorney -client privilege is not absolute. People need to understand this. So, this is really what

I wanted to bring you through today, as far as attorney -client privilege is concerned, and all that, because I think many people don't understand what it actually is, why it's important, why it needs to be preserved, really.

And so, hopefully that was helpful for you, and just understanding a little bit more about it.

This is crazy, though, that they're waiving this in the executive committee. Nothing good can really come from this.

The Me Too movement wants to say attorney -client privilege is this horrible thing, and they're just concealing evidence and incriminating evidence to show how bad these people are.

But, like I said, there's reasons behind it. It's Chesterton's fence. Don't move a fence unless you ask the question first, what's the fence doing there?

And there's a reason the fence is there. And do you find it in the Bible? No, but you find biblical principles on which this has developed and on which this rests.

So, this is not something that has come about in the last 30 years. This has been the case for a long time in British common law.

It's still the case, and it really needs to still be the case. You need to be able to trust the person that you have representing you.

So, that is the Conversations That Matter podcast for today. Please go to the website worldviewconversation .com.

Check out where I'm speaking, and if you wanna book me to speak at your church or your organization,

I would love to come and help out. People ask me sometimes, well, what's your fee? I don't really have a fee.

I just take an offering, maybe, or I'll give you my gas bill. I mean, it's really, my goal is not to make money off this.

My goal, believe me, part of me does not wanna go traveling all around the country, especially after I move, but here's the thing.

I really believe that people need to be able to stand up against this, and if there's anything I can do to help, I wanna help.

And so, I am looking forward to meeting all of you on the road. I don't mean that I'm not looking forward to it. It's more just I've been moving full steam all over the place, but it's necessary.

People need to know, and I am looking forward to meeting many of you on the road. I think it's gonna be a great time, and next year, as well,

I have some dates where I'm gonna be just speaking at various places, so let me know if you're interested in that, and please, go to the

Discerning Christians website. If you're looking for a church, create a profile and go to the candidates, and I showed you earlier how you can do that, and maybe reach out to these guys.

Hey, hey, you looking for a church? We have one. Hey, we have 40 people in this area that don't have a church, but we need a pastor.

Can you come? Can you talk to us? It would just really, we're trying to help people communicate with one another and connect with one another, so God bless.