Risk management

How private is your practice?

Most clients will expect any information you have regarding their case be kept confidential.

Any breach of this confidentiality could result in a negligence claim being made against your practice.

So what should you be doing to ensure your practice properly implements this need for privacy? Listed below are some examples of how law firms fall down with regard to client confidentiality.

The area which probably causes the biggest breach of confidentiality in most offices is the reception area.

It is important to remember that the reception area is a public place.

We have on many occasions waited in a reception and overheard staff discussing a client or the client's case.

We have even seen a lawyer sitting in the reception of the office, instructing a client about her case.

Another problem, which revolves around the reception area, is the answering of telephones.

If your receptionist is expected to answer all incoming calls to the firm, it could be that a visitor seated in the reception area might overhear some confidential information.

This can be especially problematic for sole practitioners and smaller practices with too few staff to justify one person answering the telephone and another sitting in reception.

If this is the case you need to make sure the receptionist is properly trained to handle such calls in a professional manner, and to say as little as possible in earshot of a visitor to your office.

Secondly, where are your actual meeting rooms in relation to the desks of employees? Does a client have to walk through the whole office to go into a meeting room? Could clients read confidential information or be privy to private conversations while walking by the desks of your lawyers and assistants?

There should be no possibility that clients coming to your office can hear or read anything about any other work your firm has undertaken.

Ideally, all meeting rooms should be away from your lawyers' or assistants' desks and offices, and also out of hearing range.

From some of the examples listed, it is quite worrying to see how easily client confidentiality can be broken.

Breaches of confidentiality can range from files being left in meeting rooms once the meeting is over to e-mails containing confidential information being sent to the wrong person.

Therefore, it is important to make sure all staff know and understand not only the importance of client confidentiality, but also what they need to do to ensure it.

Training all staff on how confidential information should be treated, should be made an integral part of your risk management procedures.

This article was prepared by Alexander Forbes Professions' risk management team