a. Work Product Doctrine
The Work Product Doctrine provides limited protection on discoverable materials. It protects material prepared by the attorney or those working for the attorney, in anticipate of litigation or for trial. The work product doctrine is different than the attorney-client privilege. The purpose of the attorney-client privilege is to encourage clients to make full disclosures to their attorneys. The purpose of the work product doctrine is to establish a zone of privacy for strategic litigation planning and to prevent one party from using the adversary's preparation. The exception and limitations of the Work Product Doctrine is that it does not cover document prepared in the normal operation of the client’s business. In
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other words, internal business documents prepare by the client such as sales report, data analysis or summaries of business operations. Since most business now rely on electronical storage it would be difficult to separate privileged information from discoverable information. Therefore, it would be wise to separate personal information from the work computer, or work emails to preserve it from being a discoverable in the event of litigation. b. Internal Investigations/ Evidentiary Privileges Evidentiary Privileges is a rule of evidence that allows the holder of the privilege to refuse to provide evidence about a certain subject or to bar such evidence from being disclosed in judicial proceeding. These privilege may extend to investigation and audits reports that publicly traded companies conduct because the government want to promote these companies to determine wrongdoing and identify violation of statute and regulation without the hesitation of being prosecuted. However, these privilege apples differently in each jurisdiction. c. Inadvertent Disclosure of Confidential Information Inadvertent Disclosure of Confidential Information is accidental exposure of privileged or confidential information.
The new technology in the modern era more work more efficient because we can communicate by a simple push of button on email, fax or speed dial. However, the down side is sometime this great speed would result in careless mistakes such as sending email, fax or call the wrong contact person and exposing privilege information by mistake. Therefore, it is an important habit to always to double check your work and who you are sending information to before you send it. It is a good habit to step away from your work and save it as a draft then come back to it and double before sending it out. The court may determine the admissibility of inadvertently disclosed document base on one of the following discussed three point of …show more content…
view. II. Judicial Viewpoints a. Automatic Waiver The view holds that once the confidentiality is breached, the privilege is automatically waived. There is nothing that will redeem the privilege, and therefore the document may be used by the party that received them by accident. b. No Waiver The view holds that the privilege is destroyed only when a client makes a knowing and voluntary waiver of the privilege. Therefore, the attorney’s inadvertent disclosure does not constitute a waiver. c. Balancing Test The view that the court looks at several factors: 1. The nature of the methods taken to protect the information 2. The efforts made to correct the error 3. The extent of the disclosure 4. Fairness d.
The Viewpoint I propose as the most suitable to utilize in court cases is the Balancing Test because mistakes can occur for many different reasons and different information may be exposed therefore I believe it is important to determine inadvertent disclosure of confidential information by looking into each case’s circumstance. I believe the court should not waive the privilege if the law firms have a good system to minimize inadvertent disclosure such as confidential labeling, and categorizing, notice their mistakes immediately and take steps to correct it. In additional, the court should not waive the privilege if the disclosure would significantly affect the case because the client should not be penalized for the firm’s mistake. On the other hand, if law firm are disorganized and have no method for protecting the information, who take days or never even notice it’s mistake, the court should waive the privilege as punishment if it doesn’t affect the client’s case
significantly.
Andrea may decide not to inform the limited partners about the misrepresentation of Skyline Views’s financial statements; to avoid conflict, this decision permits Ed to deceive the company and limited partners. In addition, by deciding not to inform the limited partners of Ed’s deceit, Andrea would be disregarding the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Code of Professional Conduct in her being unreliable, dishonest and deceitful. Andrea has the responsibility of protecting her client, which involves encouraging the correction of financial statements in order to prevent suspicion during audits that could lead to fines and imprisonment. Andrea’s second option is to inform the limited partners about how misrepresentations of Skyline Views’s financial statements are permitting Ed to claim a higher management fee; this decision will fulfill her due diligence obligation to the limited partners while maintaining her integrity as a certified public accountant in supporting the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Code of Professional Conduct.
There are certain standards that the courts use to determine competency. In order to find the accused competent, a court should find out by a preponderance of evidence that the defendant has remarkable ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational indulgence. The def...
3. The court stated: "We conclude that when the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of justice. The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.
Silence or Omission: Not coming forward or withholding important information can be highly unethical if it leads to harm or damages
The Jaffee-Redmond ruling heavily impacted how all organizations and firms deal with staff members’ rights. Today, the legal human resource environment requires that all key organizational professionals know and understand the laws affected by this case. Prospective job candidates who are well-versed in these laws and similar issues can outmaneuver less knowledgeable candidates. Training in current privacy laws are a valuable asset in several settings, such as:
E-discovery is the discovery of any information stored in electronic files, which deals with trading information in any electronic format, requested for inclusion in a lawsuit. Information complied from e-discovery is later identified as potentially relevant by attorneys. Evidence is there after extracted and analyzed, and then later reviewed using a review system. E-discovery includes many different materials, which is subject but not limited to: email communication, company reports, voicemails, audio and video files, social media, databases, and supplementary file types.
Arthur, G. L., & Swanson, C. D. (1993). Confidentiality and privileged communication. The ACA legal
In an age where instant access to information has influenced the privacy workplace model, which once prevails over what were inalienable assumptions of privacy is no longer a certainty in the workplace. Some companies require employees to sign confidentiality agreement to protect their patents, formulas, and processes. There are instances where companies dictate a “no compete” clause in their hiring practices, to prevent an employee from working for competitors for typically two years without legal implications. While these examples represent extents, employers go to protect their company’s privacy; companies do not go to that extent to protect the privacy of their employees.
Economic espionage is the theft of trade secrets. Trade secrets are used by companies when manufacturing products. Trade secrets may be a technique, device, pattern, program, formula, process, or a combination of these things. Companies will go the extra mile to make sure this information is protected and doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. However, economic espionage wouldn’t exist if the measures taken by companies truly protected their trade secrets. Two issues involved in investigating economic espionage and trade secrets are the difficulty of collecting evidence and proving the trade secrets were truly stolen.
Terms and Laws have gradually change overtime dealing with different situations and economic troubles in the world in general. So then dealing with these issues the workplace has become more complex with little or no rights to privacy. Privacy briefly explained is a person’s right to choose whether or not to withhold information they feel is dear to them. If this something will not hurt the business, or its party members then it should be kept private. All employees always should have rights to privacy in the workplace. Five main points dealing with privacy in public/private structured businesses are background checks, respect of off duty activities/leisure, drug testing, workplace search, and monitoring of workplace activity. Coming to a conclusion on privacy, are there any limits to which employers have limitations to intrusion, dominance on the employee’s behavior, and properties.
Despite the longstanding acceptance and promotion for the crime-fraud exception, it appears that the use of the exception to report fraud has been relatively scant and use of ethical rules to sanction lawyers is similarly rare. For those that may favor private regulation or the ability of the market to dictate its own terms it seems that the equilibrium reached was one without lawyers disclosing of their own accord. This could be just viewed as an information failure problem—even if the ability to report fraud up the ladder was technically already available, lack of knowledge may have prevented lawyers from reporting fraud when they otherwise would have done so.
Now with the introduction of the internet it is becoming increasingly difficult to control the publication of personal and private information. Any information that is collected should not be used for any other purpose except for what it was originally accepted.
The Paralegal Professional, A reference to the source of legal information chapter 1 and lettures from class powerpoints.
Technology has developed in leaps and bounds over the past few decades. The case is that the law always has difficulty keeping pace with new issues and technology and the few laws that are enacted are usually very general and obsucre. The main topic of this paper is to address the effect of technology on privacy in the workplace. We have to have an understanding of privacy before trying to protect it. Based on the Gift of Fire, privacy has three pieces: freedom from intrusion, control of information about one's self, and freedom from surveillance.1 People's rights has always been protected by the constitution such as the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from "unreasonable searches and seizures". As said by Eric Hughes, "Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."2 As written by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 is the right most valued by the American people was "the right to be left alone."3
In the ever-changing world today, companies are continuing to innovate so they can maintain a competitive advantage. In order to keep their ideas secret, companies use legal documents called non-disclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements. Thousands of companies sign these contracts with other businesses and their own employees to ensure that current projects, innovative ideas, or new products are undisclosed from competitors. NDAs provide a level of protection and comfort when disclosing information to another party.