One of the great advantages a Massachusetts ERISA litigator has is that our federal magistrate judges are very good with ERISA issues, which is something that is well illustrated by this decision on the scope of the fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege in ERISA litigation. In Kenney v. State Street, the magistrate judge dealt, in a very clean and easily understood manner, with the key issues that come into play under that doctrine, which have to do with its borders: to be exact, what attorney-client communications are subject to disclosure under this exception, and what ones are not. This is a more complicated issue of line drawing than it might appear at first glance because, in essence, you are considering the same course of communications, between the same lawyers and the same plan representatives, dealing with the same general topic (the plan’s operations), sometimes as part of the same in-person meeting, and deciding where the line falls as to the communications that must be produced and those that do not have to be produced.

The takeaway from Kenney on this line drawing is summarized nicely in this blog post by an unidentified Paul Hastings lawyer or two:

First, the attorney-client privilege is available for settlor matters, such as "adopting, amending, or terminating an ERISA plan" because those decisions do not involve ERISA fiduciary functions of managing or administering the plan.
Second, the attorney-client privilege is available to a plan fiduciary who seeks the advice of counsel in response to a threat of litigation by plan beneficiaries (or the government) against the fiduciary.

This is not an issue, by the way, that is just of academic interest, or something for clients and litigators to be concerned about after the fact, when a lawsuit is pending. A few years back there was a major top hat plan case in which some of the key evidence relied upon by the plaintiff consisted of emails and communications between the plan sponsor and its lawyers that were discoverable under these standards: that evidence was very helpful to the plaintiff, and was information that simply should not have been communicated in the manner it was (without, for instance, context and qualification) if it was ever going to see the light of day, rather than being forever cloaked behind the attorney-client privilege. Plans and their outside ERISA lawyers, who on a day to day basis in establishing and running a plan are typically not litigators, need to remember that their communications can end up in a courtroom in later litigation that cannot even be foreseen at the time of the communications in question, and should be careful with regard to the accuracy, context, phrasings and tone of such communications as a result.