I was watching an exchange between Chris Cuomo and Rep. Matt Gaetz about the relationship between President Trump and his personal attorney Mayor Giuliani.
In it Chris said:
The great theory here is, that it's one thing to ask a congressman to go and do something, we don't know if this man is the president's lawyer, if he was a proxy for the State Department or he was just acting as a concerned citizen.
But it really matters which answer is correct because if he wasn't acting as the president's personal lawyer, and we don't really know that that's true because I don't know how he was getting paid. And if it was pro bono, did he file it as such? Because we can't find any record of it. Did the president report it as such, because we don't find any record of that.
Then, Rep. Gaetz replies:
There's no obligate Chris, that's a red herring. It doesn't matter whether he is getting paid or not. What matters is whether Giuliani was acting in the interests of
And then Chis cut him off to say:
It does if you want privilege
This followed by some more back and forth, but I think the premise of the question is clear.
My question actually is to what extent a pro bono attorney client relationship has to be declared before privilege can apply.
On the one hand it seems reasonable to me that there has to be some declaration, otherwise every conversation with someone who is also a lawyer can later be claimed to be privileged (if it suits those involved). On the other hand, there may be conversations early on in the attorney client relationship before it is formally declared that should(?) also be privileged.
So, are there any rules governing when privilege applies in those pro bono cases? For this question, I'm specifically asking about the US.