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ABA Votes to Ease Restrictions on Disclosing Client Confidences

By Jeralyn, Section Law Related
Posted on Mon Aug 11, 2003 at 08:33:58 PM EST
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Yesterday we explained what was at stake in the debate over loosening ethical rules for lawyers in a manner that would allow them to disclose certain client confidences. We were against the change. The ABA House of Delegates approved the change today, by a vote of 218 to 201.

An interesting footnote. The incoming ABA President, Dennis Archer, supported the change. But the new President Elect, Robert Grey Jr, opposed them.

Opponents said the ABA was knuckling under out of fear that government regulators might step in to require more cooperation from lawyers if lawyers failed to change they way they do business.

"This is not the proper time to bow to threats by others who seek to regulate us," argued ABA President-elect Robert Grey Jr., who will succeed Archer in 2004.

"It is not a time to take the position that the core values of the profession are subject to compromise."

Update: Elaine Cassel has more on what she terms the Bush Administration's war against you--the client--as well as attorneys:

And, the mother of all injustice, the "Justice" Department, which is already listening in on conversations between lawyers and "terrorism" suspects, has this message for people under "suspicion" or investigation for any crime: waive the attorney-client privilege and let your lawyer talk to us or we will charge you with obstruction of justice and ask that years be added to your sentence (for they will get a sentence, they promise, even if they have to scramble to find something you are guilty of).

If you exercise your legal right, you will pay. Your end may not just be prison, but personal and professional ruin....It is the new reality justice--brought to you by Bush and his band of tyrants.

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