Unsatisfactory conduct. Disclosure of client contact details
This is a summary of a decision by a Lawyers Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. This summary was published in LawTalk 758.
A lawyer who disclosed her client’s contact details to the client’s ex-partner during a Family Court dispute was found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct. She was censured and ordered to pay costs.
The lawyer had first acted for the client in June 2009 in applying for a parenting order, and subsequently a protection order. In August 2009, after an incident that resulted in the ex-partner receiving a custodial sentence, the client instructed the lawyer to file an application under the Property (Relationships) Act. The lawyer included the client’s address and phone number on the information sheet accompanying the application, and did not delete these details from the copy served on the ex-partner. The client asserted that she had instructed her lawyer to keep her new address confidential from her ex-partner. The lawyer disputed this.
The Conduct and Client Care Rules require lawyers “to protect and to hold in strict confidence all information concerning a client, the retainer, and the client’s business and affairs acquired in the course of the professional relationship” (Rule 8). The footnote to this Rule specifically mentions the client’s address as an example of information that must be protected even though it may be widely known or a matter of public record.
The Standards Committee noted that this was not a situation covered by Rule 8.2(d), where disclosure of information is required by law, by a court order, or by the lawyer’s duties to the court. In fact, the information sheet specified that the applicant’s contact details could be deleted from the copy served on the respondent.
The lawyer and the client disagreed on whether the client had specifically instructed the lawyer to keep her contact details confidential. But regardless of whether the client had done this, the Standards Committee said, the lawyer should have turned her mind to the issue. She had earlier been involved in obtaining a protection order for the client, and so should have been all the more vigilant, as disclosing the client’s address to her ex-partner could have had significant consequences.
The Standards Committee found the lawyer guilty of unsatisfactory conduct, finding under section 12(a) that she had fallen short of the standard of competence and diligence that the public is entitled to expect of a reasonably competent lawyer and also, under section 12(c), that she had breached the Conduct and Client Care Rules. The Standards Committee censured her and ordered her to pay $400 in costs to the New Zealand Law Society.