Source: https://malcolmmercer.ca/category/lawyers-obligations/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 00:17:10+00:00

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The principal duties owed to clients are well known: commitment, confidentiality, candour and competence.[i] Much has been written and debated about commitment and confidentiality. Their nature and scope are reasonably well understood. Competence and its legal twin negligence are conceptually simple enough, albeit fact-specific.
Candour is another matter. Candour seems straight-forward. Simply be honest with your clients, tell them what you know and all will be well. But this naïve approach is problematic. As is often the case in legal ethics, difficult issues arise because duties can collide. Candour and confidentiality can be irreconcilable duties and confidentiality is pervasive for lawyers. By way of example, a prospective client discloses information that shows that you cannot act because there is a conflict. Confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege require that you keep the information confidential. Candour may require that you disclose the information to your existing client. Through no one’s fault, candour and confidentiality may irreconcilably conflict without any perfect solution being available.
For those in firms, candour is something of a strange beast. Clients retain firms. Firms owe duties of commitment, confidentiality and candour to their clients. Firms are responsible for the quality of the services provided to their clients. But it is practically impossible to require that every firm member disclose all that they know that is relevant regarding every matter for every client of the firm. In a firm of any size, there would be no time to do anything else if everyone was required to consider every retainer in the firm and what they know that is relevant. No one would suggest that candour requires this. Perhaps the obligation is that those involved in the representation must disclose what they know. This is workable. But perhaps the obligation is that there be disclosure of what is known to be known by other lawyers with no obligation to search out the unknown knowns. But there is little clarity available on what the duty of candour actually means for a firm as opposed to an individual.
While candour is a duty for the benefit of our clients, there are circumstances where clients don’t expect and don’t want candour. I recall a number of years ago a very complicated commercial problem in which a number of sophisticated businesses retained highly expert experienced lawyers The lawyers were retained because of their deep knowledge of the clients, the industry, the problem and the law. Separate counsel for each client, whose interests were well aligned, would not have been viable. I have little doubt the lawyers did not share everything that they knew about each client’s predicament with every other client. I have no doubt that this was what the clients wanted and needed. While likely not recognized at the time, this was at least arguably a breach of the joint retainer rule in the Rules of Professional Conduct.
The Court of Appeal for England and Wales recently addressed candour in Goldsmith Williams Solicitors v E.Surv Ltd,  EWCA Civ 1147[ii]. The relevant facts are straight-forward. A solicitor acted for the purchaser of a residential property and for the mortgage lender. The solicitor knew of a recent transaction at a price that cast doubt on whether the fair market value of the property was reflected in the current purchase price. This is relevant information to a mortgage lender as the fair market value of the mortgaged property, which is security for the loan, is material to the risk of the loan.
Like [the trial judge], I consider that the question whether the Solicitors were under [a duty to disclose] in the present case depends on whether, properly construed, that duty was excluded by, or was inconsistent with, the terms of the Solicitors’ retainer… .
(c) if a conflict develops that cannot be resolved, the lawyer cannot continue to act for both or all of them and may have to withdraw completely.
Model Rule 3.4-5 does not contemplate that clients in a joint retainer can agree that information will be treated as confidential. The reasoning from Goldsmith Williams cited seems inconsistent with our Codes and Rules of Professional Conduct.
… A solicitor who acts for more than one party to a transaction owes a duty of confidentiality to each client, but the existence of this duty does not affect his duty to act in the best interests of the other client. All information supplied by a client to his solicitor is confidential and may be disclosed only with the consent, express or implied, of his client. There is, therefore, an obvious potentiality for conflict between the solicitor’s duty of confidentiality to the buyer and his duty to act in the best interests of the mortgage lender.
Our Codes and Rules of Professional Conduct avoid the conflict to which Millett LJ refers by requiring that confidences not be kept in joint retainers. The English approach appears permit the duty of confidentiality to continue but recognizes that conflicts may arise to be dealt with on that basis. However, Millett LJ goes on to say that there is implied authority to communicate all title documents to both clients in the case at bar.
The distinction may be seen as being between information only relating to client decisions in the matter in which the solicitor is retained and information relating to the legal work of the solicitor. In Goldsmith Williams, the solicitor was not retained to advise as to the value of the security but rather to deal with title. The price and date of the prior transaction was relevant to the value of the security but not to title. This information was relevant to the mortgage lender’s decision-making in the transaction but not to the legal work for which the solicitor was retained.
Building on this distinction, it seems to me that there are at least three categories of information to which the duty of candour applies in Canada. Before reading Goldsmith Williams, I had thought that there were two.
The first category is information about the lawyer-client relationship rather than the subject-matter of the retainer. Canadian National Railway Co. v. McKercher LLP,  2 SCR 649 provides a convenient example. A lawyer who sues his or her client for another client has a duty of disclosure in that regard whether or not a deemed conflict exists. A client is entitled to fire their lawyer whether or not the lawyer is acting properly and is entitled to disclosure of information that might cause the client to do so. Similarly, clients are entitled to know when their lawyers may be in a conflict of interest or may have been negligent in their work.
The second and third categories are in respect of the subject matter of the retainer. The second category is information about the legal issues and work. Clients are entitled to disclosure of the work done for them, the basis of legal advice given to them and information relevant to their decisions and instructions on legal issues.
The third category is information relevant to the matter in respect of which legal assistance is sought but not to the legal work per se[iv]. The distinction between information relating to the value of the mortgaged property and to title to the mortgaged property illustrates the difference between the second and third category.
Thought of in this way, it is less surprising that a duty of disclosure with respect to information going to the value of mortgage security might be affected by the agreement between the parties. An analogy may be drawn to conflict waivers. Conflicts can be waived but only if the result is not a material adverse effect on client representation. Where a solicitor is not retained to deal with the value of the mortgage security, the solicitor’s representation of the client is not affected by non-disclosure of information going to value even though the client’s interests are affected.
On the other hand, failing to disclose a prior mortgage would obviously materially impair the very work entrusted to the solicitor namely ensuring that the expected mortgage is conveyed to the mortgage lender.
Read with these distinctions in mind, Model Rule 3.4-5 is perhaps somewhat enigmatic. The Model Rule says that “no information received in connection with the matter from one client can be treated as confidential so far as any of the others are concerned”.
Separate from the joint retainer rule, our Codes and Rules of Professional Conduct require candour in all matters but, unlike avoiding conflicts, there is no provision for consent otherwise. Does the scope of the candour rule include information relevant to client decision-making but not to the legal representation and issues? If so, can the client agree otherwise.
Reflecting back on the “very complicated commercial problem” with a number of clients with a common problem, I’m now less convinced that there was a problem as it appears that the information in issue related to the clients’ commercial decision-making rather than to the legal representation and issues and the clients would have been appalled to have their commercial information shared. While I’m uncertain about the actual operation of the conduct rules in this context, I’ve less doubt that the clients should have been able to decide for themselves subject to ensuring that legal representation was not compromised as a result.
3.4-15 When a lawyer acts for both the borrower and the lender in a mortgage or loan transaction, the lawyer must disclose to the borrower and the lender, in writing, before the advance or release of the mortgage or loan funds, all material information that is relevant to the transaction.
Our current approach to candour may be an example of over-enthusiastic embrace of well-intentioned principles. Clearly, lawyers must be honest and candid with their clients. But saying no more than that raises its own problems. Clients must be protected by conduct rules but conduct rules should not unnecessarily limit client choices in their own best interests.
[i] One can quibble whether avoidance of conflicts is included in commitment or is a separate duty. Competence is required under the Codes and Rules of Professional Conduct while the obligation at law is not to be negligent.
[ii] Thanks to Harvey Morrison for pointing out the case.
[iii] In Commerce Capital Trust Co. v. Berk (OCA) (1989), 68 OR (2d) 257, Justice McKinlay wrote for the Court “… when a fiduciary relationship exists (as it undoubtedly does in this case, given the solicitor-client relationship), one then looks to the nature of any alleged breach of that fiduciary relationship to determine liability. In this case, the alleged breach was the non-disclosure of the facts which have been outlined above. If the undisclosed facts are “material”, then there can be no “speculation” by the court as to what course the client mortgagee would have taken had full disclosure been made.” It is interesting that Canadian courts have considered candour in this context as a matter of fiduciary obligation while the English courts appear to have considered disclosure as a matter of the duty of care.
[iv] Of course, these are not necessarily water-tight compartments.
[v] To be clear, I do not suggest that the duty of candour does not apply to information that could affect the client’s commercial assessment of the risks of in the matter in which the lawyer is acting. see The Law Society of Upper Canada v Nguyen, 2015 ONSC 7192 . My limited point is that confidentiality may not necessarily be waived with respect of any and all relevant information by Rule 3.4-5. A lawyer who is possessed of information that cannot be disclosed because of a duty of confidentiality and must be disclosed because of a duty of candour cannot continue to act without resolving the conflict in a proper way. Ignoring either duty is not acceptable.
This recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada resolves nearly fifteen years of litigation regarding the lawyer’s role in protecting against anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing. This decision is significant to those interested in legal ethics on several points.
The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (the “Act”) and the regulations thereunder (collectively the “Regime”) require that lawyers collect, record and retain certain client information. The Act authorizes search and seizure of documents in the possession of lawyers. The Court concluded that the Regime to be contrary to section 8 of the Charter for failure to provide sufficient protection to solicitor-client privilege.
… the reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to communications subject to solicitor-client privilege is invariably high, regardless of the context. The main driver of that elevated expectation of privacy is the specially protected nature of the solicitor-client relationship, not the context in which the state seeks to intrude into that specially protected zone.
While considered in the context of an Act which “has a predominantly criminal law character” whose “regulatory aspects serve criminal law”, it appears that the Court has more generally diminished or eliminated the relevance of the reason for the search and seizure and has emphasized that what is relevant is that solicitor-client privileged information is not protected in the search and seizure[iii].
The majority of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia concluded that on one of the principles of fundamental justice relevant to section 7 of the Charter is “the independence of the Bar”. The majority concluded that the Regime deprives lawyers and clients of their liberty interests in a manner which does not accord a principle of fundamental justice namely the independence of the Bar.
While the Court of Appeal and the Federation place great stress on independence of the bar as it relates to self-regulation of the legal profession, I do not find it necessary or desirable in this appeal to address the extent, if at all, to which self-regulation of the legal profession is a principle of fundamental justice. As LeBel J. [has] pointed out… self-regulation is certainly the means by which legislatures have chosen in this country to protect the independence of the bar … But we do not have to decide here whether that legislative choice is in any respect constitutionally required. Nor does the appeal require us to consider whether other constitutional protections may exist in relation to the place of lawyers in the administration of justice.
Some will regret that the Court did not find self-regulation to be constitutionally protected thereby avoiding other forms of regulation such as in Australia and England where self-regulation has been lost. While I am a supporter of self-regulation, my view is that this is the better result. Good self-regulation may well be the best approach but other forms of independent regulation would be better than bad self-regulation. If the profession does not regulate well then there should be a risk of loss of self-regulation. And there is no doubt that lawyers are conflicted by their self-interest in some important respects. This conflict is mitigated to some extent by the risk of loss of self-regulation – and loss of self-regulation could be necessary depending on the nature and extent of self-interested self-regulation.
In the context of state action engaging s. 7 of the Charter, … (subject to justification) the state cannot impose duties on lawyers that undermine the lawyer’s compliance with that duty, either in fact or in the perception of a reasonable person, fully apprised of all of the relevant circumstances and having thought the matter through. The paradigm case of such interference would be state-imposed duties on lawyers that conflict with or otherwise undermine compliance with the lawyer’s duty of commitment to serving the client’s legitimate interests.
In our view, this “principle” lacks sufficient certainty to constitute a principle of fundamental justice: …The lawyer’s commitment to the client’s interest will vary with the nature of the retainer between the lawyer and client, as well as with other circumstances. It does not, in our respectful opinion, provide a workable constitutional standard.
Of course the duty of commitment to the client’s cause must not be confused with being the client’s dupe or accomplice. It does not countenance a lawyer’s involvement in, or facilitation of, a client’s illegal activities. Committed representation does not, for example, permit let alone require a lawyer to assert claims that he or she knows are unfounded or to present evidence that he or she knows to be false or to help the client to commit a crime. The duty is perfectly consistent with the lawyer taking appropriate steps with a view to ensuring that his or her services are not being used for improper ends.
The duty of commitment to the client’s cause is thus not only concerned with justice for individual clients but is also deemed essential to maintaining public confidence in the administration of justice. Public confidence depends not only on fact but also on reasonable perception. It follows that we must be concerned not only with whether the duty is in fact interfered with but also with the perception of a reasonable person, fully apprised of the relevant circumstances and having thought the matter through. The fundamentality of this duty of commitment is supported by many more general and broadly expressed pronouncements about the central importance to the legal system of lawyers being free from government interference in discharging their duties to their clients.
It is particularly noteworthy is that independence from obligations and government interference that might interfere with service of legitimate client interests is seen as important not just to the trust and confidence of individual clients but also to public confidence in the administration of justice.
It is also noteworthy that Justice Cromwell has placed commitment both as a principle essential to the administration of justice and as a fiduciary obligation. This suggests that Neil, McKercher and Federation of Law Societies may be seen as establishing that the lawyer’s duty of loyalty is founded both in fiduciary law and in the law protecting the administration of justice.
The question now is whether another central dimension of the solicitor-client relationship — the lawyer’s duty of commitment to the client’s cause — also requires some measure of constitutional protection against government intrusion. In my view it does, for many of the same reasons that support constitutional protection for solicitor-client privilege. “The law is a complex web of interests, relationships and rules. The integrity of the administration of justice depends upon the unique role of the solicitor who provides legal advice to clients within this complex system”: … These words, written in the context of solicitor-client privilege, are equally apt to describe the centrality to the administration of justice of the lawyer’s duty of commitment to the client’s cause. A client must be able to place “unrestricted and unbounded confidence” in his or her lawyer; that confidence which is at the core of the solicitor-client relationship is a part of the legal system itself, not merely ancillary to it: … The lawyer’s duty of commitment to the client’s cause, along with the protection of the client’s confidences, is central to the lawyer’s role in the administration of justice.
Echoing the reasons of Justice Binnie in Neil, Justice Cromwell has placed client confidence in their lawyers as “part of the legal system itself” and not “merely ancillary” to it. The protection of client confidences and commitment to the client’s cause are clearly said both to be central to the lawyer’s role in the administration of justice. These are important statements that will no doubt be repeated in future case law and not just in Charter cases.
In order for section 7 of the Charter to be engaged, it is necessary that state deprivation of a person’s life, liberty or security be in issue.
Justice Cromwell finds that the liberty interests of the lawyer are engaged by the Regime as “The scheme limits lawyers’ liberty by punishing with imprisonment the failure to comply with its requirements”. Justice Cromwell reasons that “It is not necessary to determine whether the liberty interests of clients are infringed”. The Court of Appeal however also found that the liberty of the client was in issue as a purpose of the Regime is to establish a paper trail for enforcement purposes including criminal law sanction.
The reliance by the majority on the lawyer’s rights is curious. One might think that analysis of the right not to be deprived of liberty except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice would consider fundamental justice as it relates to the deprivation. It seems a strained interpretation to consider principles of fundamental justice that protect third parties under section 7.
This is perhaps results-driven reasoning. Framing the issue in terms of lawyer liberty establishes a much broader protection than would focus only on client liberty. The lawyer-focused approach protects clients from loss of commitment by the state by means that deprive the lawyer of life, liberty of security of the person (but not where lesser means are used). On the other hand, a client-focused approach only protects against loss of commitment where the client’s life, liberty or security of the person is at risk of deprivation.
Leaving aside the logic of the reasoning, the effect is to establish that the state may not, without proper justification, interfere with the duty of commitment owed to clients by means of loss of loss of life, liberty or security of the lawyer. It seems logical that Charter scrutiny of impaired commitment is a engaged where a client’s loss of life, liberty or security is at risk of deprivation by the state even where commitment is impaired by means not involving the lawyer’s life, liberty or security of the person.
However (and obviously), there is no Charter protection of the duty of commitment where deprivation of the life, liberty or security of neither the lawyer nor the client is in issue.
Still, framing the duty of commitment as a principle of fundamental justice is an important statement of policy that will no doubt inform the common law and statutory interpretation even where Charter rights are not in issue.
[ii] Citations in this and following quotes are omitted.
Typically, these cases require two questions to be answered: (1) Did the lawyer receive confidential information attributable to a solicitor and client relationship relevant to the matter at hand? (2) Is there a risk that it will be used to the prejudice of the client?
Of course, not all confidential information received by a lawyer in the context of a solicitor and client relationship is privileged. While confidential communications between lawyer and client for the purposes of obtaining and providing legal assistance are protected by solicitor-client privilege, confidential communications with third parties are generally not.
And when Macdonald Estate was decided, the Canadian courts had not yet clearly delineated between solicitor-client privilege and litigation privilege. We now understand that confidential communications with third parties for the dominant purpose of litigation are generally protected by litigation privilege but not by solicitor-client privilege[ii].
The Canadian law of privilege is also clearer with respect to “common interest” which, in certain circumstances, permits privileged information to be shared on a confidential basis without waiver of privilege. Sharing privileged information between parties in litigation with a common interest is the obvious example but sharing privileged information with a view to completing commercial transactions is another[iii].
The Macdonald Estate principles have been applied in new circumstances over the last two decades. Macdonald Estate itself was a transferring lawyer case in which the “virus” of confidential information came with a transferring lawyer who had previously acted on the other side in ongoing litigation.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario applied the Macdonald Estate principles to acting against former clients in Chapters Inc. v. Davies, Ward & Beck LLP [iv]. In Celanese Canada Inc. v. Murray Demolition Corp.[v], a law firm was disqualified to ensure that privileged information of the opposing party improperly acquired through an Anton Pillar order was not accessed. In Stewart v. Humber River Regional Hospital[vi], the Court of Appeal for Ontario disqualified a law firm that had learned privileged information from the opposing party in litigation as a result of retaining an expert witness previously retained by the other side.
The starting point is that the courts have an inherent supervisory jurisdiction that extends to the removal of solicitors from the record where their conduct of legal proceedings would adversely affect the administration of justice (MacDonald Estate, at p. 1245 S.C.R.).
While the cases have not yet examined whether the Macdonald Estate principles apply with equal vigour to litigation privileged information as to solicitor-client privileged information, one would think that the same result would apply despite the greater protection applied to solicitor-client information as the integrity of the administration of justice requires that the opposing party not have access to either type of privileged information.
While not yet decided so far as I am aware, I would expect that the Macdonald Estate principles would apply to protect privileged information obtained under the “common interest” exception as well. For example, if a lawyer were to receive privileged information about ongoing litigation in the context of a failed asset purchase, it would seem to follow that the lawyer could not turn around and act for the opposite party in that litigation.
But do the Macdonald Estate principles apply to confidential information that is not privileged? Reviewing Macdonald Estate, Justice Sopinka refers throughout to confidential information rather than to privileged information although he does refer to “confidential information attributable to a solicitor and client relationship”. This phrase is somewhat ambiguous. It would seem to apply to lawyer-client communications. Yet a lawyer receiving non-privileged but confidential information from an opposing party in a transactional matter will have received confidential information as a result of a solicitor and client relationship.
… Nothing is more important to the preservation of this relationship than the confidentiality of information passing between a solicitor and his or her client. The legal profession has distinguished itself from other professions by the sanctity with which these communications are treated. The law, too, perhaps unduly, has protected solicitor and client exchanges while denying the same protection to others. This tradition assumes particular importance when a client bares his or her soul in civil or criminal litigation. Clients do this in the justifiable belief that nothing they say will be used against them and to the advantage of the adversary. Loss of this confidence would deliver a serious blow to the integrity of the profession and to the public’s confidence in the administration of justice.
From this, the point of MacDonald Estate can be seen as being to ensure that a client’s privileged information be protected by disqualification against being used against them and that non-privileged confidential information was not intended to be protected. It is also reasonable to conclude that it is only the privilege-holder who is protected under the Macdonald Estate principles.
While this may all seem a bit arcane, the questions of the nature of the information properly protected under MacDonald Estate principles and who is entitled to protection are recently raised in two separate contexts.
(b) the new law firm represents a client in a matter that is the same as or related to a matter in which the a former law firm represents or represented its client (“former client”); (ii) the interests of those clients in that matter conflict; and (iii) the transferring lawyer actually possesses relevant information respecting that matter.
While perhaps not intended, the transferring lawyer rule is engaged whenever a transferring lawyer has relevant confidential information, whether privileged or not, whether or not obtained from a client and whether or not obtained in the context of a lawyer-client relationship. The transferring lawyer model rule, as amended, may now have a much broader ambit. While it is seems obviously good to protect confidential information, it is important to recognize that the transferring lawyer rule can result in disqualification of the lawyer in an existing matter. It is startling to think that a client could lose his or her lawyer to protect information that is not privileged and not necessarily learned in the course of any lawyer client relationship.
The second is a recent case in which leave to appeal a disqualification order was recently granted by the Ontario Divisional Court in Performance Diversified Fund v. Flatiron et al[vii]. In Flatiron, an employee consulted a lawyer about employment issues and, in that context, apparently disclosed confidential information about the business of the employer. The law firm was disqualified on the motion of the employer. This raises interesting questions.
If viewed as a matter of the law of confidential information, it is understandable that the court could intervene to protect against the misuse of an employer’s confidential information disclosed by an employee to a third party. But if viewed as a matter of the law of privileged information or the protection of the administration of justice, it is difficult to see why the employer would have right to seek to protect the privilege rights of the employee. Relevant confidential information is ordinarily accessible by discovery in litigation while privileged information is not. The employer’s confidential information did not become privileged by communication by the employee to his lawyer.
My view is that the Macdonald Estate principles properly apply, given their policy basis, to the protection of privileged information at the instance of the privilege-holder. Where privileged information is not at issue and where the rights of a privilege-holder are not put at risk, the administration of justice is not imperilled if the lawyer continues to act – and there is no basis to require that another party be deprived of the lawyer of their choice – who may well be expensive to replace.
This discussion may illustrate what may be seen as a lack of clarity in our thinking around protection of information under the law of lawyers and the Model Code. Some protected information under the Model Code need not even be confidential information (e.g. Model Rule 3.3-1). Some protected information may not need to be privileged (e.g. Model Rule 3.4-18(c)). The Model Code does not distinguish between confidential information and privileged information and is thought by some to imply that privileged information may be used where the law of privilege would not permit its use (e.g. Model Rule 3.3-4(b) and (c)).
It seems to me that our ethical rules and the law could benefit from greater precision so that we protect what is properly protected in support of the administration of justice.
The obligation of the agent to make full disclosure … includes “everything known to him respecting the subject matter of the contract which would be likely to influence the conduct of his principal” (Canada Permanent Trust Co. v Christie) or, as expressed in 1 Hals., 3rd ed, p. 191, para. 443, everything which “. . would be likely to operate upon the principal’s judgment”. ..
When advising a client, a lawyer must be honest and candid and must inform the client of all information known to the lawyer that may affect the interests of the client in the matter.
But like many other statements of professional standards that seem obviously true when stated generally, it just isn’t quite that simple in real life.
Let’s start with an easy one. In intellectual property litigation, it is common for confidential information to be disclosed on the basis that the lawyers will have access to the adverse party’s confidential information but their clients will not. This is often, but not always, by court order. Despite the duty of candour, lawyers can withhold this material information to their clients. On one view of this, there is no issue because the client consent is required in the circumstances. But does that mean that the duty of candour can be waived? Is waiver of candour permitted in all circumstances or just in some?
A harder case is inadvertent receipt of privileged information. Here, the lawyer would not have the protected information had things worked out properly. Clearly, the administration of justice requires protection of privileged information4. Does candour require disclosure of what should never have been known? Is client consent required not to disclose?
Law society rules regulate joint retainers requiring that lawyers advise their joint clients that secrets can’t be kept between clients in a joint retainer. If candour can be waived by clients, does this rule apply where clients want secrecy between them for some matters in a joint retainer?
While law society rules are (mostly) about the duties of individual lawyers, fiduciary duties are owed by firms to their clients as well as by individual lawyers. Does the fiduciary duty of candour mean that the firm (i.e. every lawyer in the firm) must disclose everything known by the firm that is material? This is practically impossible of course in a firm of any size. But why isn’t it so nonetheless as a matter of principle? And what about confidentiality screens? If the duty of candour is owed in respect of everything known by the firm, aren’t confidentiality screens per se improper?
One might think that all of this would have been worked out in the jurisprudence somewhere but, if it has been, I can’t find it. So let me sketch out what seem to me to be some of the necessary nuances to the general rule.
First, there are some situations where the administration of justice requires that candour be limited. In these situations, any lawyer would be in the same position. If candour is not limited, justice cannot be done.
Second, it is important to be clear about the nature of the retainer. The duty of candour is limited to matters relevant to the retainer.
Third, candour probably can’t be waived. We know that actual conflicts, as opposed to potential conflicts, can’t be waived. Where representation will be materially impaired by a conflict, the conflict is not waivable. A client can only accept the risk of material impairment. If clients cannot agree to impaired representation for conflicts, the same should be true for candour. It follows that clients must have the information required to effectively instruct counsel and act on advice given by counsel. Further, the client must have the information required to assess whether the fiduciary lawyer has acted properly.
Fourth, it is unclear whether candour is owed by the firm or just by the lawyers involved in the representation. I think that it must be just the lawyers involved if only as a practical matter. Otherwise, every lawyer in a firm would have to understand every retainer of the firm and consider what information is relevant from every other retainer they have had and from any other source.
… if a solicitor puts himself in a position of having two irreconcilable duties … it is his own fault.
1 The duty of candour owed to clients is not to be confused with obligation of candour to the court. The scope of and the basis for these obligations are entirely different.
4 Protection of the administration of justice sometimes requires disqualification of lawyers who inadvertently receive privileged information of the adverse party. But that is outside of the subject of this column.

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