Does solicitor-client privilege extend to conversations in which a person makes disclosures while seeking to retain a solicitor?

Laycraft, J.A. in finding such communications privileged stated that solicitor-client privilege can extend to conversations in which a person makes disclosures while seeking to retain a solicitor, even if the retainer is not perfected. Laycraft, J.A. referred to the following comments made in Lyell v. Kennedy (1884) 27 Ch.D.1 in the course of reaching his conclusion: But then this privilege is confined to that which is communicated to or by that man [the client] by or to the solicitors or their agents, or any persons who can be treated properly as agents of the solicitors. We have therefore thought it right, in order to prevent an evasion of what is the proper view of the law by the use of that word ̀agents,΄ to require that the Defendant shall put in a further affidavit stating whether the agents mentioned were his agents, or whether they were the agents of the solicitors and persons so employed by the solicitor as to be his agents, including such agents as every solicitor’s clerk may be said to be, who would all be entitled to the protection given to solicitors. Subject, then, to that alteration, we think that the protection claimed is in law good.