|
medpundit |
||
 |
 |
|
Tuesday, January 21, 2003There are rules that require that disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer be treated as confidential. Those rules are at least nominally intended to protect clients by ensuring that when a client brings a grievance against a lawyer, the client doesn't lose the protection of attorney-client privilege. (They may have the secondary effect of protecting the attorney by keeping the proceedings out of the papers, and one could reasonably debate whether those rules could be reformed to accord greater weight to the public interest in disclosure of the proceedings while they are ongoing.) However, those rules do not prevent a consumer of legal services from speaking about his or her complaints outside of a disciplinary proceeding. The suggestion that anyone would ever be fined or imprisoned for doing so is absolute nonsense. That depends on what the meaning of “confidential” is. Maybe a talented lawyer could find a way to change the meaning of the word to allow public disclosure, but most of us laypeople who take language at its face value would be hard-pressed to do so. The original quotation, from HALT’s website specified that there are nine states that have stiff gag rules. Since HALT is staffed by lawyers, I’ve got to assume they know what they’re talking about. posted by Sydney on 1/21/2003 07:35:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|
