News

Respecting the Legal Professional Privilege

The legal professional privilege (LPP) is among the foundations of the right to defence. An advocate has to keep confidential all that he or she has learnt from the client in connection with providing legal aid. The obligation is not limited in time, and the advocate cannot be relieved of it in relation to the facts revealed to him or her while providing legal advice and conducting the case.

“In order to effectively provide legal aid in the broad sense of this term, that is not only as a legal counsel, an advocate has to be covered by LPP,” says advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak in an interview he gave to Jacek Dąbrowski.

However, it does happen that the authorities of the justice system interpret LPP very narrowly.

“I have personally been called twice to appear in court where, as it turned out, I was supposed to, upon a motion of one of the parties, testify as to the circumstances covered by LPP,” says advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak. “When I realised what the actual purpose for summoning me was, I did what any advocate should do and refused to answer any questions which would concern information covered by LPP. Apart from that, I informed the District Bar Council about this situation,” adds advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak.

In the interview, advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak also referred to the recent announcements on conducting inspections in law firms which were made by the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection (GIODO). “I am sure that these announcements will not, in the least bit, lead to violations of data protected by LPP [...] If, however, a GIODO inspector came to my law firm and wanted to conduct an inspection, it would be a huge problem from a practical point of view. An advocate should not allow any monitoring activities which could, even potentially, pose a danger to LPP,” says advocate Mikołaj Pietrzak.

The full text of the interview was published in the December issue of Edukacja Prawnicza. The whole interview is available (only in Polish) here.