Advisory Opinion:
2081
Year Issued:
2005
RPC(s):
RPC 1.6, Formal Opinion 183, Formal Opinion 195
Subject:
Provision of information by a not-for-profit public defense agency from its client files to county funding authority for billing verification or performance audit
The inquirer asks whether a not-for-profit public defense agency and its lawyers may reveal confidential information in client files in order to verify work billed to the funding authority (county).
The committee opined as follows:
A lawyer or not-for-profit legal service may not disclose information to third parties which would disclose or lead to disclosure of confidences or secrets of clients without the informed consent of the client pursuant to RPC 1.6. A lawyer would ordinarily be precluded from disclosing the substance of conversations with the client. RPC 1.6 does not necessarily preclude a lawyer from submitting information regarding the type of tasks performed and the time spent on tasks to a third party who has responsibility for screening prospective clients for referral to individual lawyers, monitoring the effective provision of legal services to indigent parties, and reimbursing lawyers who undertake representation of indigent clients.
For the purpose of this inquiry it is assumed that the client(s) are clients of the attorney/not-for-profit organization and not the County itself. It also is assumed that the County Executive or Office of Public Defense already has access to the identity of such clients as a result of its screening and referral process.
A lawyer cannot disclose client secrets or confidences to a third party which provides funding. Formal ethics opinion 183 discusses this in detail. Formal ethics opinion 195 addresses the question of whether a lawyer can advise the client to sign a waiver allowing the release of such confidences or secrets and again the answer is “no.”
This prohibition on disclosing client confidences and secrets would not ordinarily preclude the attorney from disclosing time records that describe the general nature of tasks performed in the course of the representation or the amount of time spent on each task. With limited exceptions, the name of a client is not a confidential communication. Dietz v. Doe, 131 Wn.2d 835 (1997). In any event, the identities of the clients here are already known to the referring agency. Thus Rule 1.6 would not preclude the attorney from submitting a billing statement that can be identified to a particular client.
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