How should I handle the confidentiality strictures of the rules of professional ethics in discussions with students about their field experiences?
The issue of how to handle ethics rules prohibiting disclosure of confidential information students may learn in their externship placements is a tricky one. Unlike WCL’s in-house clinics, the participants in externship seminars include students from a wide variety of placements, who cannot regard themselves as one “law firm” in which clients’ secrets can be shared without violating professional confidentiality rules. Externship seminar faculty therefore generally try to ensure that students discuss their field experiences within the limits imposed by the confidentiality rules of the jurisdiction in which the student’s legal work is being conducted. Some professors devote all or part of a class at the beginning of the semester to this issue. Helping students learn to operate within the rules of the profession is obviously an important objective of externship seminars and many of us find legal ethics matters a rich source of material for seminar discussions. Many of us have also found t
