According to the requirements of lawyers' professional ethics and practice discipline, lawyers have the obligation of confidentiality. The information obtained by lawyers in the process of handling cases cannot be told to others, including the case handlers.
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.