Preserving client confidences is an important part of a lawyer’s professional life. Hopefully we all instruct our staff frequently about the importance of maintaining confidentiality. Documenting instructions about confidentiality can have at least two benefits: 1) More formality serves to impress staff even more with the significance of the discussion and 2) Documentation can aid the firm should a third party ever question the training process.
As a first step toward that goal, attached is a downloadable sample confidentiality agreement to be executed by all nonlawyer staff. You may also want a version for outside contractors such as computer consultants or couriers. There’s no magic language here. Download this file, copy the text, paste it into your word processor and customize it as you wish. If you find something missing, e-mail me your suggestions. Several Oklahoma lawyers have contributed to this document.