Attorney Client Ethics

RichardMonks.com

When can you divulge confidential client matters? The baseline answer is, "Almost never, at all." When these can be disclosed -
even MUST be - is when necessary to prevent serious harm or death from wrongfully occurring.
An attorney must respond to letters or call from clients seeking updates or information about their case. Ethically, the responses
from the attorney or law firm are mandatory, subject only to the requests for information or updates being reasonable. Thus, if
someone called twice a day for an update, that may or may not be reasonable, under the circumstances of any given case. For
many cases, a monthly update and discussion is helpful. For others, weekly or more may be absolutely necessary.
An attorney must explain important things to a client that the client would find necessary to make a reasonable decision about the
case. Thus, simply saying, "Yeah, this can settle tomorrow at $4,000," is not adequate, unless the reason for higher or lower
offers and settlements has already been discussed and the client does not want or need any further information than the fact that
$4,000 is possible tomorrow.
Any attorney who is sued for malpractice may release the client's file to the client or his authorized attorney representative.
However, even without such a lawsuit, it is mandatory to release the file and all of its contents to the client at the client's request.
Failure to communicate with the client is probably at the base of most ethics complaints. Those clients who feel hurt, demeaned, or
insulted by a series of unanswered calls or letters, or both, are far more likely than most people to feel a need to complain about
the attorney to the local bar association or disciplinary body.
A client who comes to the attorney through a yellow pages advertisement is far more likely to complain later than a client who
comes to the attorney through referral from friends, family or acquaintances. However, any client can become loyal later, even if
the initial source of the referral is the yellow pages.
New attorney is hired to take over a case - the new attorney must send the entire file to the client or the new client's attorney,
promptly after being asked to do so. There is no good excuse not to remit client files. Non-payment of bill, having a bad case,
attorney not feeling good, etc., are not excuses, even though they make help explain the understandable natural feeling of not
wanting to do anything for the client such as help the client. These files MUST be sent on.
Explain carefully to the client and let them be a participant in the case, as it happens! Many clients do not want to know too much
about the process, but in case they do, it is better to be guilty of having them stay longer for an appointment to discuss the case,
than of finishing up too soon or having others booked end on end.