You are here
Confidentiality issues
Fri, 2007-01-19 19:34 — Admin1
Before contributing content that is in any way related to the work done for their employer, the user should have their employer screen the proposed contribution and grant permission for publishing. Besides the conflicts, copyright, and other issues that may need consideration, the following confidentiality issues may arise:
o Employees owe a duty of fidelity to their employers which includes an obligation to not use confidential information for their own advantage. The scope of the duty of confidentiality is a mixed question of fact and law that is difficult to assess and best avoided: it is best to obtain consent.
o Under professional codes of conduct, Lawyers owe duties of confidentiality to their clients. See, for example, Chapter 5 of the Professional Conduct Handbook of the Law Society of British Columbia. The best approach is to simply refrain from mentioning clients' cases in any way.
The following words of Binnie J. in Strother v. 3464920 Canada Inc., 2007 SCC 24 at para. 111 emphasize that although lawyers normally own the copyright in their work product, client confidentiality must always be maintained:
Recycling precedents is the life-blood of corporate law practice. A document prepared for Client A is part of the lawyer's work product and may go through numerous iterations in the service of other clients. The practice of law would be hopelessly inefficient and costly for clients if transactional documents had to be reinvented rather than customized. Provided confidential information is not employed, it seems to me that [Client A] cannot complain [because documents prepared for his or her transaction are subsequently used for another client].
This page does not provide advice to contributors - under the Terms of Use, users are completely and solely responsible for the content they publish – it merely alerts contributors to one of the issues they should consider before contributing content.
