Client Confidentiality Isn't Just for Lawyers: Why Everyone in a Law Firm Has an Ethical Duty

Hello! Welcome to today's episode of the Legal Tech Podcast, sponsored by the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC and Integrated Technology Services, LLC, both of Havertown, Pennsylvania. The Law Offices of Daniel J.

Siegel, LLC provides legal services to individuals, lawyers, and small businesses throughout Pennsylvania. Integrated Technology Services provides training, integration, software management, and workflow advice to individuals and small businesses throughout the country, including law firms. Today, I want to discuss a subject that affects every lawyer, every law firm, employee and perhaps more importantly, every client who entrusts a lawyer with deeply personal information. Most people assume that the attorney client confidentiality privilege means simply that lawyers can't tell anyone what their clients say.

That's true, but it's only part of the story. The reality is that your confidential information is often handled by far more people than just your lawyer. Legal assistance, paralegals, receptionists, billing staff, IT professionals, outside technology vendors and now, increasingly, artificial intelligence tools may also touch information relating to your case. The question is this who is responsible for protecting your confidential information?

The answer should be everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone understands that. I was recently reading a trial court order involving discovery of a law firms Iota account, which is their law firm trust account during a divorce case. As you might imagine, an Iota account or a trust account, as it is often called, contains extraordinarily sensitive information clients identities, settlement payments, financial transactions, and much more.

To the judge's credit. The order required substantial redactions to protect client privacy. But then I read something that genuinely surprised me. The court suggested that client identities weren't confidential.

As to law firm staff, if those staff members learned the information while working at the firm, I stopped because that simply isn't how law firm ethics works. Legal ethics is every bit involved with that. Law firm staff aren't somehow outside the rules of confidentiality. The rules apply to them as much as anyone.

In fact, they are an essential part of maintaining it. That misunderstanding got me thinking about how many people, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, don't fully appreciate what confidentiality really means. As a result, I wondered, how do you explain this to lawyers? So let me start with the public.

Suppose you're hiring a lawyer because you're injured in an accident, or you're getting divorced, or you've been charged with a crime, or you've been planning your estate, you'll probably tell your lawyer things you've never told anyone else. You'll talk about your finances, your medical history, your marriage, your business, your children, your fears, sometimes even your mistakes. Yes, you do that because you believe and know inherently that those conversations are protected.

They are. But here's something many clients don't necessarily think about. Your lawyer almost certainly isn't the only person handling your information. When you first call the office, you may speak with an intake specialist.

When you email documents to the office, a legal assistant may organize them. A paralegal may summarize your medical records. Someone in accounting prepares invoices, and outside it company may maintain the firm's computer systems. Your documents may be stored on secure cloud servers, and if the lawyers work remotely, your information may travel across networks, hopefully encrypted before it ever reaches the lawyers screen.

None of that's improper. In fact, that's how modern law firms work. The problem isn't that other people see your information. The problem is making sure every one of those people understands that confidentiality begins and belongs with the client, not to the lawyer.

That's an important distinction. The duty isn't there to protect lawyers. The duty is there to protect clients. Clients deserve to know that everyone who touches that information understands that responsibility.

That is why. Rule of Professional Conduct 5.3 the rules of ethics exist. The rule exists because it recognizes something that's obvious today, but perhaps wasn't 40 years ago.

Lawyers don't practice alone. They supervise teams, and every member of that team must understand that confidential information is never simply office gossip, interesting news, or something to mention over lunch. It's part of the client's trust. Once clients begin wondering whether everyone in the office takes confidentiality seriously, confidence in the entire legal system begins to erode.

And once trust is lost, it is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Now let's talk about lawyers. One of the biggest misconceptions I, I encounter is that confidentiality training is something lawyers receive while staff simply know better. That's dangerous.

Rule 5.3 if the rules of professional conduct make lawyers responsible for ensuring that the conduct of non-lawyer staff is compatible with the lawyer's ethical obligation. Notice what the rule doesn't say. It doesn't stay.

Hope your staff behaves. It doesn't say give them a handbook. It says that the lawyers have a supervisory responsibility to maintain and to explain the information. If your secretary accidentally discloses information, or if you're billing department includes privileged strategy in an invoice, or if your marketing department posts something that reveals a client relationship, or if your IT consultant has unrestricted access without appropriate safeguards, those become your ethical problem.

Those responsibilities alternately rest with a lawyer, and the lawyer is the one who would receive discipline. In fact, in form of possibly losing their license if they in fact, that information is disclosed even by their staff. There's another misconception I hear constantly it's already public or it's all over the news or everybody knows they're getting divorced. The lawsuit was filed yesterday.

What's the harm? The harm can be significant. Confidentiality isn't determined by whether the public knows something. It is determined by how you learned it.

If you learned information through the attorney client relationship, it's generally confidential. Even confirming that someone is your client can be improper. Think about that. A receptionist who says yes, she's our client may believe they're simply being polite.

Instead, they may have disclosed confidential information. This happens more often than people realize. Now let's talk about the newest challenge, A.I.

Artificial Intelligence. It seems it's everywhere. AI can draft documents. Hey, I can summarize depositions, analyze contracts.

It can rewrite emails, it can translate documents, it can do research. It's an extraordinarily productive tool to have, but it's also an extraordinary confidentiality risk. The biggest mistake people make is assuming AI is private. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

Many public AI systems tell users that submitted information they may be retained or used to improve the service. It. Every day, lawyers and staff copy client information into AI systems without thinking about what happens after they press enter. Here's my rule if you wouldn't dictate the information loudly in a crowded elevator, don't paste it into AI.

That advice applies equally to lawyers and to staff, and frankly, it's good advice for everyone else to banks, hospitals, businesses, anyone handling sensitive information. That's why you see those signs in the hospital. Don't talk about the patients in the hospital in the elevators. But it's also tempting just to blame technology.

Confidentiality problems existed long before AI lawyers used to discuss cases in elevators, just like doctors and medical people did. They used to leave files on conference room tables or fax documents to the wrong phone number. They could email the wrong client. Technology has simply made the mistakes faster, easier.

One click, one upload, one AI prompt. Suddenly, confidential information can travel around the world in seconds. That's why firms can't rely on old assumptions. They need modern policies, modern training, modern supervision.

Many firms have confidentiality policies. That's good. But policies alone don't create ethics and ethical behavior. Culture does.

People protect confidentiality when they understand why it matters. Clients share information with lawyers that they may not share with spouses, or with parents, or with children, or with their employers, or even their closest friends. They do so because they trust us. That trust is the foundation of the attorney client relationship.

If you lose that trust, everything else begins to crumble. And if you're a client, don't be afraid to ask questions. How is my information stored? Who has access to my file?

How does the firm use AI? How does it protect electronic information? Those aren't annoying questions. They're smart ones.

Good lawyers should welcome them. And if you're a lawyer, ask yourself a different set of questions. When was the last time your staff received confidentiality training? Do they understand?

Do they really understand that confidentiality includes the identity of the client? Do they know when AI can and cannot be used? Do your outside vendors understand your ethical obligations? Because ethics isn't just about avoiding discipline, it's about protecting the people who trusted you enough to tell you their story.

Confidentiality remains one of the legal professions defining principles, but preserving it no longer depends solely on lawyers. It depends on everyone who works with them. And it matters not only because the rules of professional conduct require it, but because every client deserves to know that the information that they share in confidence will remain just that confidential. I'm Dan Siegel.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Legal Tech Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and share it with a lawyer, a colleague, or with someone else who has ever wondered what really happens after they tell a lawyer I have something confidential to discuss? Until next time. Remember, confidentiality isn't simply a rule, it's a promise.

And that promise is everyone's responsibility. Thank you. This episode of the Legal Tech Podcast has been sponsored by the law offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC, Dan I e j s I l and Integrated Technology Services, LLC t c h l w.

Y e r g. That's Daniel J. And technology both provide services to the public and to attorneys. So remember when you have a question.

Feel free to contact us and remember to subscribe and share this episode with colleagues. Thank you.