Attorney-Client Privilege: The Rule of confidentiality

Attorney-client privilege: Whatever you tell your lawyer is completely confidential.

Do you know that your lawyer is under a strong obligation not to divulge or leak any confidential information or anything at all you told him as a client? This is called the Attorney-Client Privilege and it is also regarded as the rule of confidentiality under the Rules of professional conduct for legal practitioners.

The attorney-client privilege is a rule that protects the confidentiality of communications between lawyers and clients. Under this rule, an attorney or a lawyer (as we preferably called in Nigeria) cannot divulge his clients’ secrets or any confidential information confided in him by the client to a third party.

This rule was provided for in clause 19 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners in Nigeria and it states thus:

19. —– (1) all oral or written communications made by a client to his lawyer in the normal course of professional employment are privileged.

19(1a) a lawyer shall not reveal a confidence or secret of his client.

This is not just a rule for legal practitioners in Nigeria, it is a global rule which any lawyer or legal practitioner in any legal jurisdiction of the world is expected to uphold.

This rule was made in order to protect clients’ secrets because, at the cause of a professional relationship between a lawyer and client, a client is expected to tell the lawyer everything or expose some confidential information to the lawyer. So assuring the confidentiality of that information, the privilege rule encourages clients to make “full and frank” disclosures to their attorney, who are then better armed and fully  able to provide candid advice and effective representation to the client.

Therefore, by the purport of the Attorney-client privilege or the rule of confidentiality, Whatever you tell your lawyer is completely and entirely confidential.

If by any means, what you told your lawyer or any information you confided with your lawyer leaked to the press or to the next person you can sue your lawyer for breach of confidentiality or the breach of attorney-client privilege.