Every lawyer you meet holds secrets for hundreds or often thousands of individuals who have consulted with them over the course of their career. When a lawyer practices long enough, the secrets are then rarely extraordinary, and so they are forgotten when the brief is closed. When you have shocking information from several thousand people, you are no longer shocked, and your focus becomes what tools you have to help your client. In that sense sometimes it may seem a cold calculation to achieve the best outcome. This is one of the reasons lawyers are targets of criticism.
It is impossible to remember all of the confidential things we learn, but it is easy to remember that the duty remains to protect privilege. Although in our office we are in all other senses secular as can be, this duty is a sacred trust.
Canada is becoming one of the few jurisdictions where lawyer/client confidentiality is still nearly an absolute. There have been intrusions into the relationship between lawyer and client, mainly to ensure lawyers do not assist people to commit offences. For the most part, however, this relationship is well protected by our law.
As a result, lawyers can speak with opposing parties off the record without concern about the information being used inappropriately. Your lawyer cannot be forced to testify against you.
We receive many very smart and thoughtful emails every day, particularly from people who have had to deal with Government offices and Government contractors involved in the IRP scheme. We read them all, and we would like to share some of the insights with you. However, there are very strict limits on what we can share, not only because of privilege but because of the overarching ethical obligations and rules we have as lawyers.
We abide by certain principles as lawyers because in general we accept that they are appropriate, and we are duty bound to do so. Still, in a free and democratic society, we encourage the open discussion of issues. That is something as lawyer we cannot always do. (And we hold many secrets.)
But we encourage people to get out and express their opinion, particularly of their experience with the Government and police regarding the IRP scheme. The matter will be before the Legislative Assembly in the next few months. We cannot be the only voices trying to explain the problems with the scheme.
The Government thinks it will have an easy ride when it introduces the new rules to decide outstanding and future IRP cases. We have our fingers crossed that the NDP opposition will oppose, but we are are counting on engaged British Columbians to speak up in defence of our right to make full answer and defence to any allegation that has as a consequence such harsh punishment as do IRPs.