A person was convicted of murder.
They take on new legal representation to help them appeal against the conviction.
They waive privilege to give their new lawyer access to the notes of conversations between the person and their former lawyers, expert reports and other privileged material.
Does that mean anyone can now access that material?
No. You don't waive professional privilege by disclosing communications with a lawyer who was advising you to another lawyer who is also advising you.
If that were the case, people wouldn't be able to effectively hire teams of lawyers (or at least, not a team that can cooperate with each other). They also wouldn't be able to switch lawyers effectively. Both of those things happen very commonly.
You only waive privilege if you disclose the information to someone outside the professional privilege relationship. The only way that could happen with a second lawyer is if that lawyer isn't representing or advising you.
Privilege is not waived where a person discloses legal advice they have received in circumstances where an obligation of confidentiality is assumed. This is an explicit obligation for both solicitors and barristers towards their clients – see: the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors and the BSB Handbook respectively.
One of the leading authorities on this principle is Gotha City v Sotheby’s [1998]. In this case, the court held that privilege was not lost where legal advice was shared with the auction house from which another had purchased a painting with disputed ownership. Here, the obligation of confidentiality was inferred by the court.
Similarly, victims of crime often disclose privileged advice to assist the police in convicting the accused. If the victim then goes on to make a civil claim against the perpetrator, it would be contrary to public policy to allow the perpetrator to say that privilege had been waived by the victim when the advice was communicated to the police – and indeed British Coal Corpn v Dennis Rye Ltd [1988] affirms this point.
