Lawyers who become victims of or witness a crime committed by their clients against those associated with or related to the lawyer may disclose some information that might ordinarily be subject to confidentiality, the American Bar Association says in an ethics opinion released Wednesday.
In those circumstances, attorneys might have an interest in reporting the crime to law enforcement and disclosing information that could go against the ABA’s model rules on confidentiality.
It’s “unreasonable” to expect lawyers, however, to keep quiet about a client’s crime in those situations, and requiring a lawyer to abide by the duty of confidentiality in ...