Attorney-Client Privilege

You are a court appointed attorney for an alleged murderer. During one of your attorney – client meetings, the accused discloses the fact one week ago he abducted a 5 year old boy from a local playground, murdered him and buried the remains behind his house. After your interview with him, you find an article in a local newspaper where a mother is pleading for information about her missing son.

You are currently faced with an ethical dilemma. The information you received was provided in confidence during an attorney-client meeting, and you would be disbarred if you revealed this information.

Your assignment is to write a response on what you would do in this situation. The response you provide is to be supported by research and should be written at a graduate level.NOTE: With this situation, your client will not disclose the information; therefore, attempting to convince him would not work, so do not focus on having your client do the right thing.

Your paper should go beyond the obvious, be written at a graduate level, and must be no less than 1200 words. You must use no less than three additional resources (other than your required text) that support your position. All resources used must be properly cited using the APA style.

For credit, in your response, you must include at least three journal articles that support your information. Remember, all resources including, but not limited to, journals, magazines, and/or books must be properly cited using the APA style. Make sure that you follow the exact way to cite your references.

NOTE: Your entire paper must be in APA format. This requires a cover page, abstract, body, and references. The cover page contains descriptor with page number, Running Head, Title, Author, and University. In the body, each paragraph must be attributed and cited properly. Points will be deducted for not following the proper format.

Answer preview

Introduction

In the practice of law, attorneys and clients interact on a day to day basis. Law in itself is a profession that demands confidentiality between an attorney and his or her client. As such, information shared between the attorney and the client is deemed to be privileged. This privilege extends to documents as well as oral testimonies. The existence of the attorney-client privilege means that lawyers, especially defense attorneys, cannot be compelled to testify before a court of law through the issuance of a subpoena especially when the testimony relates to communication between the attorney and the client (Boxerman, 2015). The case presents an ethical dilemma as the attorney is expected to decide between the interests of the client vis a vis the interests of the public represented through the mother of the murdered body…

(1200 words)