Confidentiality

Lawyer Bloggers Beware: “Public” Client Information Is Still Confidential

Confidentiality, Advertising, Legal Ethics, Social Media Ethics / By

Lawyers love to talk about their client success stories and latest wins, particularly on websites, blogs, LinkedIn and other social media.  This form of lawyer self-promotion is particularly pronounced in litigation matters, where the victorious lawyers and their firms routinely, and proudly, announce to the world what wonderful result they achieved for their client. Many […]

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Don’t Let The Screen Door Hit You: The Ethics Of Switching Firms

Confidentiality, Deceit, IP Ethics, Law Firm Breakups, Patent Ethics / By

You are sitting at your desk when the phone rings.  It’s a head hunter. The caller tells you about an amazing opportunity with another firm across town.  That call starts a series of calls and meetings.  Eventually, the new firm offers you a position.  There are, however, two strings attached.  First, the new firm expects

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So These Two Lawyers Walk Into A Bar . . . .

Confidentiality / By

What sounds like the start of a joke is no laughing matter–at least not for two White House attorneys. As widely reported last week, Don McGahn and Ty Cobb, President Trump’s lawyers, were overheard at a popular D.C. restaurant discussing/arguing about a highly confidential matter concerning their client: namely how cooperative The White House should

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Greenberg Traurig Avoids Former Client’s DQ Motion By Consenting To Withdrawal

Confidentiality, Conflicts of Interest, IP Ethics / By

Greenberg Traurig has apparently decided that discretion is the better part of valor.  The law firm has agreed voluntarily to withdraw as counsel from a litigation rather than face a disqualification motion in which it was charged with a conflict of interest for trying to invalidate patents it helped prosecute.  We previously reported here that

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To Encrypt, Or Not To Encrypt, That Is The Question

ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Competence, Confidentiality / By

The ABA has dived head first into the pool of law firm cybersecurity.  On May 11, 2017, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued Formal Opinion 477 (here), which addresses a broad range of issues that lawyers must consider to protect client confidential information from “nefarious actors throughout the internet.”

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New Lawsuit Accuses IP Counsel Of Attacking Same Patents It Prosecuted

Confidentiality, Conflicts of Interest, IP Ethics / By

It is Ethics 101 that a law firm cannot use its former client’s confidential information in a substantially related matter on behalf of a different client directly adverse to the former client, at least not without the former client’s informed consent.  The reason for this common sense rule, which prohibits “side-switching,” is that a lawyer’s

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Anonymous, Inc.: Lawyers, Ethics And Money Laundering Featured On 60 Minutes

Confidentiality, Legal Ethics / By

For those of you who are not convinced about the importance of legal ethics in modern society, I urge you to watch yesterday’s broadcast of the story entitled Anonymous, Inc., which was shown on CBS’s 60 Minutes. The venerable weekly news program used a fake client representative, wired with a hidden camera and a false story,

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