The work product doctrine will NOT protect you if you are gathering evidence by illegal means (i.e. pretexting for a consumer’s private financial records), as the work product doctrine is NOT privilege (i.e. attorney-client privilege) and has less power than privilege; all an attorney needs to do to bring out this type of material that an attorney is trying to protect under the work product doctrine is demonstrate to the court that there is no other way they can obtain the material than compelling it, and that it goes to significantly support their client’s claim in court.

I have come to realize that there are some P.I.s out there that are actually more knowledgeable about the law in their specific area of expertise than the attorneys they work for, due to experience. In some cases the attorney might be asking the P.I. to do something that he or she is not even aware of as being illegal. This is why it is important to know the law as it applies to your cases, the rules of evidence, your court’s procedures, and how to use the tools that the court provides for you to gather your evidence with (i.e. subpoenas).

Thee is nothing that a good P.I. can’t get his hands on legally, that a “bad P.I.” can get his hands on illegally. it may take a little more time, but a good P.I. can achieve just as much as an unethical P.I., as long as he understands how to use the tools that are there for him to use as provided by the court.

Pellicano was a “slipshod Investigator”, that is why he had to conduct himself like a “thug”, and break the law to gather information (hard to call it evidence, as most of it never saw a court room, and was instead used to blackmail people with). How he gathered information is a sign of how poor of a Private Investigator he really was.

Rick.

As Ely said, “make sure to lay out for them what your obligations are - some may just not know about them.” It’s often incumbent upon the investigator to educate the attorney and to raise the topic of information gathering methods. I’ve regularly had the experience of telling the lawyer who asks for a specific type of information that it has to be collected within the terms of, for example, the Financial Privacy Act, and have them say that they don’t know what that is. I’ve explained it, they say that they don’t want to do anything that may be legally suspect, and then we go on to do the investigation that we can. But investigators shouldn’t hold back from informing the attorney about their proposed information gathering methods. Put the responsibility in their hands.