Assignment:
This discussion asks you to examine the difference between confidentiality and the attorney/client privilege. Please thoroughly discuss each of the following:
1) Discuss the difference between something being protected by confidentiality and something being privileged with any attorney/client relationship.
2) An attorney has a general duty not to disclose information relating to their client's representation. There are several exceptions to this. Please discuss other permitted or required disclosure of information by an attorney.
3) You are a paralegal at a criminal law firm. A prospective client comes in to meet with the attorney for the first time. The attorney asks you to sit in on their conversation to take notes in a private board room at the firm. The prospective client tells you both that he has just murdered his wife and buried her in his backyard. He threw the gun in a pond in his neighborhood. He would like the attorney/law firm to represent him should he be charged with murder.
Answer the following:
a) Do you or the attorney have to report the crime?
b) May you tell anyone where the wife is buried?
c) May you tell anyone where the gun is? Explain why or why not?