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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2023
Client confidentiality expresses the duty of loyalty to our clients, but our secrets are shrinking. Social media, hacking and surveillance are increasingly modern realities. Globally, concern about leaky ‘cloud’ storage, terrorism, corruption, organised crime and money laundering, as well as economic and trading challenges to state and public security, are reportable and create an environment in which lawyers cannot guarantee clients’ privacy. Nevertheless, professional secrecy remains important for lawyers to observe, because clients will not trust us if they think their affairs will be disclosed. We tabulate the confidentiality conduct rules across Greater China and analyze several scenarios according to the four frameworks of general morality. Deciding to keep a secret for good reasons can be a moral act that increases the stability of society. In the mainstream of cases where there are no state secrecy issues, lawyers need to re-legitimize support for client confidentiality because keeping secrets is still important to our communities, so that filial and personal relationships are respected and the common privacy we all need is retained.
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