Confidentiality of Information.

Confidentiality means that nothing exchanged between the client and lawyer can be disclosed by the lawyer without client's permission.   The concept is designed to make client to be able to provide a lawyer with all information without fear that the information will be used in courts or repeated to the third party.  As a result, clients can obtain more valuable, complete and sound legal advice or representation.  The rule is sometimes called solicitor/client privilege because it is client's privilege that the information is not disclosed to anyone.

Similarly, most of the documents and information that are used to prepare for court litigation is protected by litigation privilege.  The purpose of the privilege is to allow lawyer to solicit additional information from client or experts without concern that the lawyer may be required to produce the documents to courts.  The corporate clients often use lawyers and the confidentiality and privilege concepts to protect financial and other confidential information that is prepared for the litigation purposes.

The lawyer is required to act in the best interest of the client.  The relationship is based on trust it is why it is called fiduciary relationship (fiducia is a Latin word for trust).  The lawyer cannot advice two clients if those clients' interests do not coincide. Similarly, if the lawyer is retained to represent two clients in one matter (or a corporation and an officer or director of this corporation), no information or documents that are communicated to the lawyer by one client can be withheld from the other client.

Lawyer's Practice.