The New Rules for Keeping Secrets

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Opponents of the reform argue that it distracts lawyers from their primary obligation: rigorously advocating the interests of their clients. But backers say the new policy will force lawyers to weigh their obligations to clients against their larger duty to society. Read between the lines, and you have an implicit acknowledgment that lawyers could do something to improve their image. "There's been a recognition, particularly when there's a danger to life and limb, that lawyers ought not to be legalistic," says Nancy Moore, a Boston University professor of law who helped draft the proposed new rules.

At the same meeting, however, the A.B.A. balked at adopting a companion proposal that would have allowed disclosure of client secrets when the risk of harm is only financial. Under the rejected rule, a lawyer would have been able, for example, to rat on a client who was committing fraud. The measure's critics argued that it would make the loophole too large and would too often put lawyers at odds with their clients. It could also, they warned, harm a client's legal representation by leading the client to hide significant facts from his attorney.

In Boston the archdiocese was making an about-face of its own. The church announced last week that it was supporting a bill in the state legislature that would add priests and other clergy to a list of professionals, including teachers and social workers, who are legally required to report suspected child sex-abuse cases to the authorities.

The Boston church's shift--it opposed the bill a week earlier--came amid a messy sexual-abuse scandal. Bernard Cardinal Law recently admitted, as part of a civil lawsuit against the church by abuse victims, that after he was informed that John Geoghan, a priest, had allegedly molested seven boys, he transferred Geoghan to several other Boston parishes. Geoghan, who retired in 1993 and was defrocked five years later, is accused of molesting at least 70 children. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

This kind of legal exposure and the press that comes with it have made it hard for the church to deal with sexual abuse by priests as an internal matter, as it once did. If the bill passes, Massachusetts would become the 12th state to require priests to report child sexual abuse. The church, like the A.B.A., loosened up only so far. The archdiocese would not back the bill until it was assured that priests would still be exempt from revealing anything--including sexual abuse--they learned in confession.

There is one big exception to the tendency to redefine what can remain confidential, and that is in the world of business, where trade secrets are increasingly perceived as precious commodities that need protection. The global economy relies more and more on companies that create and sell knowledge, but their employees are less inclined to keep the boss's secrets, owing to either diminished loyalty or the high rewards for selling out. The FBI has put the cost of industrial espionage at more than $100 billion annually. Of the first 24 cases prosecuted under the Economic Espionage Act, 18 involved corporate insiders. The latest high-profile example: pink-slipped dotcommers who are often taking proprietary information with them on their way out the door.