Issues concerning lawyer-client privilege are, to date, largely untested in Italy. Legal privilege in Italy does not have the benefit, in practical terms, of the safeguards that have been implemented in other jurisdictions. It is hoped that in the future, Italian authorities will comply at least with the principle set forth in EU case law that lawyer-client confidentiality covers correspondence between a client and an independent lawyer established within the EU.

According to some legal authors, correspondence exchanged between clients and lawyers in Italy should not be seized during regulatory raids in light of the broad constitutional right of legal defense. However, this theory (though legally persuasive) has not yet been supported by case law and appears to be somewhat neglected by Italian authorities.

In some instances, the Italian Antitrust Authority has simply seized privileged documents without regard to their nature, whilst in other cases, the same authority has not physically seized the documents but nonetheless read their contents during an inspection in order to gain an understanding of the purpose of a legal opinion and possibly clarify some relevant issues or facts. In order to avoid such situations, it is common practice amongst antitrust practitioners to have attorneys closely shadowing inspectors from the Italian Antitrust Authority during all phases of an investigation so as to be able to immediately oppose the seizure of privileged documents protected by professional secrecy.