You’re...welcome? For what it’s worth, mainstream American legal ethics try to strike a balance between candor and advocacy. It’s actually not OK for lawyers to provide unabashed advocacy; lawyers are expected to also pay some regard to epistemic accuracy. We’re not just hired mercenaries; we’re also officers of the court.
In a world that was full of Bayesian Conspiracies, where people routinely teased out obscure scraps of information in the service of high-stakes, well-concealed plots, I would share your horror at what you describe as “disclosing personal information.” Mathematically, you’re obviously correct that when I say anything about my client(s) that translates as anything other than a polite shrug, it has the potential to give my clients’ enemies valuable information. As a practical matter, though, the people I meet at dinner parties don’t know or care about my clients. They can’t be bothered to hack into my firm’s database, download my list of clients, hire an investigator to put together dossiers on each client, and then cross-reference the dossier with my remarks to revise their probability estimate that a particular client is faking his injury. Even if someone chose to go to all that trouble, nobody would buy the resulting information—the defense lawyers I negotiate with are mathematically illiterate. Finally, even if someone bought the resulting information, it’s not clear what the defense lawyers would do if they could confidently upgrade their estimate of the chance that Bob was faking his injury from 30% up to 60% -- would they tail him with a surveillance crew? They do that anyway. Would they drive a hard bargain in settlement talks? They do that anyway. Civil legal defense tactics aren’t especially sensitive to this kind of information.
All of which is to say that I take my duties to my clients very seriously, and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them. If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’ and live by a principle of ‘disclose no information’, and you are willing to pay for the extra privacy, then more power to you—but beware of lawyers who smoothly assure you that they would never disclose any client info under any circumstances. It’s a promise that’s easy to make and hard to verify.
and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them.
Your ethical intent sounds fine but that is of limited use without competence. The sort of casual disclosure described in the ancestor anecdote would make me slightly downgrade my evaluation of the trustworthiness and social competence of any professional that works with sensitive information. Much like those observed casually gossiping about other people at inappropriate times will be silently downgraded as potential confidants.
If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’
The overwhelming majority of minor ethical transgressions that we make will “do no harm”. Some do. If the consequences were that easy to predict we wouldn’t need ethical inhibitions in the first place.
That’s an important warning, and I’m glad you linked me to the post on ethical inhibitions. It’s easy to be mistaken about when you’re causing harm, and so allowing a buffer in honor of the precautionary principle makes sense. That’s part of why I never mention the names of any of my clients in public and never post any information about any specific client on any public forums—I expect that most of the time, doing so would cause no harm, but it’s important to be careful.
Still, I had the sense when I first read your comment six weeks ago that it’s not a good ethical maxim to “never provide any information (even in the mathematical/Bayesian sense of “information”) to anyone who doesn’t have an immediate need to know it.”
I think I’ve finally put my finger on what was bothering me: in order to provide the best possible service to my clients, I need to make use of my social and emotional support structure. If I carried all of the burdens of my work solely on my own shoulders, letting all of my client’s problems bounce around solely in my head, I’d go a little crazier than I already am, and I’d provide worse service. My clients would suffer from my peculiar errors of viewpoint. In theory, I can discuss my clients with my boss or with my assistants, but both of those relationships are too charged with competition to serve as an effective emotional safety valve—I don’t really want to rely on my boss for a dose of perspective; I’m too busy signalling to my boss that I’m competent.
I think this is probably generally applicable—I want my doctors to have a chance to chat about me (without using my real name) in the break room or with their poker buddies, so that they can be as stable and relaxed as possible about giving me the best possible treatment. Same thing with my accountant—I’m much more concerned that my accountant is going to forget to apply for a legal tax exemption that’ll net me thousands of dollars than I am that my accountant is going to leak details about me to his friend who, unbeknownst to the accountant, is friends with the husband of an IRS agent who will then decide to give me an unfriendly audit. Sure, it’s important to me that my medical and financial details stay reasonably private, but I’m willing to trade a small amount of privacy for a moderate increase in professional competence.
Do you feel differently? I suspect that some of the people who make bold, confident assertions about how “nobody should ever disclose any private information under any circumstances” are simply signalling their loyalty and discretion, rather than literally describing their preferred policies or honestly describing their intended behavior. Perhaps I’m just falling prey to the Typical Mind fallacy, though.
I think there’s a difference between “does no harm, because it had a substantial chance of doing harm, but someone got lucky”, and “does no harm, and the chance of harm wasn’t ever substantial to begin with”.
You’re...welcome? For what it’s worth, mainstream American legal ethics try to strike a balance between candor and advocacy. It’s actually not OK for lawyers to provide unabashed advocacy; lawyers are expected to also pay some regard to epistemic accuracy. We’re not just hired mercenaries; we’re also officers of the court.
In a world that was full of Bayesian Conspiracies, where people routinely teased out obscure scraps of information in the service of high-stakes, well-concealed plots, I would share your horror at what you describe as “disclosing personal information.” Mathematically, you’re obviously correct that when I say anything about my client(s) that translates as anything other than a polite shrug, it has the potential to give my clients’ enemies valuable information. As a practical matter, though, the people I meet at dinner parties don’t know or care about my clients. They can’t be bothered to hack into my firm’s database, download my list of clients, hire an investigator to put together dossiers on each client, and then cross-reference the dossier with my remarks to revise their probability estimate that a particular client is faking his injury. Even if someone chose to go to all that trouble, nobody would buy the resulting information—the defense lawyers I negotiate with are mathematically illiterate. Finally, even if someone bought the resulting information, it’s not clear what the defense lawyers would do if they could confidently upgrade their estimate of the chance that Bob was faking his injury from 30% up to 60% -- would they tail him with a surveillance crew? They do that anyway. Would they drive a hard bargain in settlement talks? They do that anyway. Civil legal defense tactics aren’t especially sensitive to this kind of information.
All of which is to say that I take my duties to my clients very seriously, and I would never amuse myself at a cocktail party in ways that I thought had more than an infinitesimal chance of harming them. If you prefer your advocates to go beyond a principle of ‘do no harm’ and live by a principle of ‘disclose no information’, and you are willing to pay for the extra privacy, then more power to you—but beware of lawyers who smoothly assure you that they would never disclose any client info under any circumstances. It’s a promise that’s easy to make and hard to verify.
Your ethical intent sounds fine but that is of limited use without competence. The sort of casual disclosure described in the ancestor anecdote would make me slightly downgrade my evaluation of the trustworthiness and social competence of any professional that works with sensitive information. Much like those observed casually gossiping about other people at inappropriate times will be silently downgraded as potential confidants.
The overwhelming majority of minor ethical transgressions that we make will “do no harm”. Some do. If the consequences were that easy to predict we wouldn’t need ethical inhibitions in the first place.
That’s an important warning, and I’m glad you linked me to the post on ethical inhibitions. It’s easy to be mistaken about when you’re causing harm, and so allowing a buffer in honor of the precautionary principle makes sense. That’s part of why I never mention the names of any of my clients in public and never post any information about any specific client on any public forums—I expect that most of the time, doing so would cause no harm, but it’s important to be careful.
Still, I had the sense when I first read your comment six weeks ago that it’s not a good ethical maxim to “never provide any information (even in the mathematical/Bayesian sense of “information”) to anyone who doesn’t have an immediate need to know it.”
I think I’ve finally put my finger on what was bothering me: in order to provide the best possible service to my clients, I need to make use of my social and emotional support structure. If I carried all of the burdens of my work solely on my own shoulders, letting all of my client’s problems bounce around solely in my head, I’d go a little crazier than I already am, and I’d provide worse service. My clients would suffer from my peculiar errors of viewpoint. In theory, I can discuss my clients with my boss or with my assistants, but both of those relationships are too charged with competition to serve as an effective emotional safety valve—I don’t really want to rely on my boss for a dose of perspective; I’m too busy signalling to my boss that I’m competent.
I think this is probably generally applicable—I want my doctors to have a chance to chat about me (without using my real name) in the break room or with their poker buddies, so that they can be as stable and relaxed as possible about giving me the best possible treatment. Same thing with my accountant—I’m much more concerned that my accountant is going to forget to apply for a legal tax exemption that’ll net me thousands of dollars than I am that my accountant is going to leak details about me to his friend who, unbeknownst to the accountant, is friends with the husband of an IRS agent who will then decide to give me an unfriendly audit. Sure, it’s important to me that my medical and financial details stay reasonably private, but I’m willing to trade a small amount of privacy for a moderate increase in professional competence.
Do you feel differently? I suspect that some of the people who make bold, confident assertions about how “nobody should ever disclose any private information under any circumstances” are simply signalling their loyalty and discretion, rather than literally describing their preferred policies or honestly describing their intended behavior. Perhaps I’m just falling prey to the Typical Mind fallacy, though.
I think there’s a difference between “does no harm, because it had a substantial chance of doing harm, but someone got lucky”, and “does no harm, and the chance of harm wasn’t ever substantial to begin with”.