Last updated at 08:54, Thursday, 14 February 2013

I can still remember the excitement of receiving my certificate, signed by the Master of the Rolls (the second most senior judge), which showed I was enrolled as what is now called a Solicitor of the Senior Court.

As the names make clear, ‘solicitors’ and ‘courts’ go hand in hand even if a solicitor chooses a non-contentious area of practice and never goes to court.

I spent three years with a firm which had a big criminal practice, and defending those accused of crimes was a good experience. Socially, it led to the inevitable question of ‘how can you defend someone when you know they are guilty?’ And, of course, the answer is very simple: I would only know someone was guilty if I was there.

If the criminal admitted to me that they were guilty then things changed. I would not be able to run a not-guilty plea to trial because that would mislead the court, and solicitors are officers of the court.

Of course, what the client admits has to be a criminal offence, and on a number of occasions I had clients who admitted to things which just were not crimes, so they went free and the police were disappointed.

This was brought back to me last month as a result of the decision in Prudential PLC v HMRC by the Supreme Court. The Court has ruled that legal professional privilege (LPP) only applies to qualified lawyers (solicitors and barristers) and no-one else, not debt collection agencies, accountants or patent agents.

What does it mean? In simple terms, the Court has clearly stated what most solicitors believed was the case, that a client can have a frank, open discussion with, and write to a solicitor for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, being sure such information and correspondence will not be disclosed to the opponent, be it HMRC or anyone else.

It shows the relationship between a solicitor and barrister and the client to be a precious human right.

The purpose of LPP is to protect the client.

The lesson for those who need professional advice is to be very cautious in what you say or write because, unless it is given to a solicitor or barrister in the context of obtaining legal advice, it could come back to haunt you.

LPP puts solicitors and barristers and their clients at a distinct advantage when it comes to disclosure and that will be increasingly important as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service announced recently that it wants a five-fold increase in the number of prosecutions and is targeting the middle-income professionals.

If you want confidential advice you are better off going to see a solicitor.

First published at 08:44, Thursday, 14 February 2013
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk