Tom Spahn on Confidentiality: Key Issues

A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay of the September 2024 webcast, Tom Spahn on Confidentiality: Key Issues.

Using hypotheticals in this program, Tom Spahn explores key issues involving one of our profession’s core duties—maintaining client confidences. He addresses, among other things, our confidential duty’s strength, source, timing, and content. He also covers exceptions: in the context of joint representations; when complying with laws or court orders; when clearing conflicts; when defending from clients’ claims or criticism; and when seeking to collect unpaid fees. Finally, Mr. Spahn explores lawyers’ confidentiality and disclosure duties in the context of some non-clients’ misconduct, including corporations’ lawyers’ “reporting up” of employee misconduct, and misprision of felonies.

• Explore key issues involving one of our profession’s core duties—maintaining client confidences.
• Understand the exceptions in confidentiality.
• Explore lawyers’ confidentiality and disclosure duties in the context of some non-clients’ misconduct.

Faculty

Thomas E. Spahn, McGuireWoods LLP / Tysons

Thomas E. Spahn practices as a commercial litigator with McGuireWoods in Tysons, Virginia. He was selected as the 2013 and 2020 metro-Washington, DC “Lawyer of the Year” for “Bet the Company Litigation” by The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White, Inc.). He has served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and is a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is a fellow of the Virginia Law Foundation. Mr. Spahn has written extensively on attorney-client privilege (including the Virginia CLE^® publications The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine: A Practitioner’s Guide and A Virginia-Specific Summary Guide: The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine), ethics, and other topics, and has spoken at more than 1,400 CLE programs throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School.