Now, legal advocates are urging the prison system to rethink its plans for handling legal mail — in which staff would photocopy mail in the inmate's presence, then retain the original in a sealed envelope for up to a month before destroying it. In a letter to the department dated Sept. 18, attorneys from the Pennsylvania ACLU, the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and the Abolitionist Law Center said the policy was "indefensible," the most intrusive in the country, and a violation of attorney-client confidentiality.