Confidentiality

Being in the position of paralegal, I often come into very interesting situations. These are situations that would make for terrific stories - those stories people wish they could have to tell. Hilarious, ridiculous, off-the-wall, and just plain strange? Yes, that all goes through the doors (or phones) of a general practice. I love it, but I recognize that I cannot share them. Sometimes, people mention writing a book of all the tales encountered. The thing is, there really is no way to give those stories justice without keeping the attorney-client privilege that is simply a given.

I would love to even write a few of those stories up here - know what happened at work today? Know what crazy client x did? I know that some people do this and figure it is fine if they simply change the names. Personally, I don't agree with this; if someone reads the information I posted here, they could likely figure out who it was. Context clues really do give a good amount of information away.

Is confidentiality a good thing, though? The basics of it: anything told by a client to an attorney (and the attorney's office) are strictly confidential. In its purest form, I believe it is not only a terrific concept, but one of those core concepts necessary for our justice system to run properly. However, it can be easily abused, which is where the problems arise. What of companies which try to cover everything with the cloak of privilege by having attorneys present for tests and meetings? Things like that do happen, and even though the courts try to keep the law just, they can only rule so much within the laws of the land.