Lawyers should keep confidential the relevant information and materials that their clients and others are unwilling to disclose in their practice activities. However, criminal facts and information that endanger national security, public safety and seriously endanger the personal safety of others are being prepared or implemented by the client or others.
As an obligation, the lawyer's duty of confidentiality is different from other types of duty of confidentiality. Lawyers' duty of confidentiality has the following characteristics:
1. A lawyer's duty of confidentiality is a duty-related duty. The lawyer's duty of confidentiality is determined by the lawyer's professional characteristics, and this duty has obvious work characteristics. Specifically, lawyers' duty of confidentiality requires lawyers to keep professional secrets, that is, state secrets, business secrets of parties or personal privacy that lawyers come into contact with in the course of performing their duties.
Although lawyers, as ordinary citizens, also have the obligation to keep secrets that they don't know in the course of performing their duties, this obligation has nothing to do with lawyers' duties, so it does not fall within the scope of lawyers' confidentiality obligations.
2. The object of lawyer's duty of confidentiality is secret. The object of lawyer's duty of confidentiality must be a secret matter, and the secret here should be understood in a broad sense, including not only state secrets, but also business secrets and personal privacy of the parties. The specific identification of secrets shall be carried out in accordance with the provisions of relevant laws.
Lawyers are obliged to keep secret only for matters that can be confirmed as secrets according to law, but not for matters that should not be confirmed as state secrets, commercial secrets or personal privacy according to law.
3. The lawyer's duty of confidentiality is a moral obligation, as well as a professional discipline obligation and legal obligation.
Lawyers' duty of confidentiality is bound by many norms, which is not only related to lawyers' professional ethics, but also a discipline and legal obligation in lawyers' practice. As a moral obligation, lawyers' duty of confidentiality is adjusted by lawyers' professional ethics, which mainly requires lawyers to weigh the pros and cons from the perspective of inner condemnation and social evaluation in order to abide by their obligations.
Abiding by moral obligations is mainly the conscious behavior of lawyers. As a disciplinary obligation and legal obligation, the lawyer's duty of confidentiality is regulated by the relevant lawyer's practice discipline and legal norms. At this time, the lawyer's confidentiality obligation is mandatory, and if the lawyer violates this obligation, he will be subject to corresponding disciplinary action or legal punishment.
Legal basis: Article 38 of the Lawyers Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), lawyers should keep state secrets and business secrets they know in their practice activities, and may not disclose the privacy of their clients.