Understanding the Importance and Boundaries of Attorney-Client Relationship (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: My name is Jim McKeon and today we're going to talk about one of the most important things when consulting with an attorney to consider and that is the attorney-client relationship. It's very secretive and it's very protective. It's almost like a doctor-patient relationship and that whatever a client tells an attorney, an attorney is almost never able to divulge that information to other parties. So here's what ends up happening is clients often hide information from their attorneys or don't tell them the whole truth. It's almost always a terrible idea. It always ends up coming out later down the road and hurting the client's case because they didn't tell the whole truth to the attorney. Now there are some things to consider in this. Oftentimes individuals bring a third party, a parent or a sibling or a spouse with them to a meeting with their attorney. Well that third person in the meeting can destroy the attorney-client relationship. Why is that? Well that third person, like a spouse, may not be the actual client and so they can be made to talk about what was discussed in that meeting. There's no attorney-client relationship preventing them from being forced to talk about what happened in that meeting. So that's why sometimes you'll have an attorney ask another individual to step out of the room while they talk to the actual client. One exception to the attorney-client relationship is if a client says, I'm going to kill someone and the attorney actually believes they're going to do that, they are able to warn that person or the authorities, hey, this person says they are going to kill someone. So that's the attorney-client relationship. Very important relationship and it is very secretive, almost never can be breached. An attorney be made to talk about what was discussed in that meeting or a client made to discuss what they told their attorney. You can find out more about this legal issue and other legal issues by going to my website attorney-knoxville.com. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter. You can also view my other YouTube videos.