Absent agreement among the parties or court order, if a party withholds otherwise discoverable information on the ground of privilege, the withholding party must provide a log of the documents withheld on the ground of privilege. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(5) and Advisory Committee Comments to 1993 Amendments. This obligation pertains to materials withheld on the basis of any privilege, not only the attorney-client privilege. Any privilege log must be detailed enough to enable other parties to assess the applicability of the privilege asserted and should include: (1) the name and capacity of each individual from whom or to whom a document and any attachments were sent (including, if relevant to the claimed privilege, which persons are lawyers/doctors/clergy members/spouses); (2) the date of the document and any attachments; (3) the type of document; (4) the Bates numbers of the documents, (5) the nature of the privilege asserted; and (6) a description of the subject matter of the information contained in the document in sufficient detail to determine the applicability of the privilege.

The Court encourages counsel to discuss privilege log issues at the outset of the discovery process and to consider sensible guidelines for the types of materials that may be omitted from the privilege log process by agreement.

The Court reminds the parties that the meet and confer requirements of Local Rule 37.2 apply to privilege disputes, just as they do to other discovery disputes.