Hearing Stories Already Told: Successfully Incorporating Third Party Professionals into the Attorney-Client Relationship
44 Pages Posted: 21 Apr 2012 Last revised: 24 May 2014
Date Written: April 20, 2012
Abstract
In multidisciplinary practices, attorneys often shy away from fully incorporating other professionals working with their clients into the attorney-client relationship. This is a mistake in many cases. Although it sometimes works to use lawyer-centric ways to understand clients, like using cross-cultural lawyering tools or others borrowed from client-centered lawyering models, bringing other professionals into attorney-client meetings can be an effective way to ensure that attorneys are understanding clients’ stories and goals of representation. Attorney-client privilege may preclude this practice in some cases. However, in those that privilege is not relevant, important, or in which arguments can be made that including those professionals in attorney client meetings does not waive privilege, the practice is too valuable to ignore. The article discusses these issues, suggests arguments that attorney-client privilege is not breached in many cases by bringing in professionals, and includes suggestions for practice forms that can be signed by clients and other professionals that makes preserving privilege more likely.
Keywords: ethics, privilege, confidentiality, MLP, medical-legal, professional, social work, story, storytelling, interpreter, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, client-centered, third party, narrative
JEL Classification: K40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation