Best Practices for Maintaining Legal Privilege

Preserving confidentiality is crucial to maintaining the trust between the defense team and the client, as it is their professional obligation to protect the secrets of their client.

When integrating non-attorney staff members to assist in client service delivery, defenders should clarify the expectations and rules of legal privilege and confidentiality between the client and the defense team. It is understood that, for the purposes of privilege and confidentiality, all internal client services staff (Advocates, mitigation specialists, social workers, etc.) shall be considered members of the defense team. This extends the legal privilege and confidentiality bestowed on attorneys under a jurisdiction’s rules of professional conduct.