‘I must remain silent, even if I know my client is guilty’

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“’Anything you say stays between us.’ That’s the first thing I say when I talk to a new client. Someone who hires me can confess to a murder to me, but still plead otherwise in court. This sometimes happens to criminal lawyers, including in my practice. And I have to keep quiet about that, even though I know the client is guilty. Part of the job.

Duty of confidentiality

Outsiders often find that difficult to understand – anyway, at parties and parties I regularly have to explain why I defend ‘criminals’. But professional secrecy is one of the most important core values ​​of the legal profession.

“At parties I regularly have to explain why I defend ‘criminals’”

It’s almost the first thing you learn during law school: secrecy is sacred and applies for eternity, even if you stop working. So some secrets you literally carry with you for the rest of your life.

Removed from the tableau

You should actually see it as a kind of confession: as a lawyer you are a confidant for your clients, and everything they say or confess remains in private. I can’t go to the police with it. If I do, I will be ‘removed from the bar’ as a lawyer – or removed from office – and I will no longer be allowed to practice the profession.

So that’s a hefty sanction, and that says enough about how heavily this rule is taken within the legal profession. Recently, a former lawyer in the Netherlands was removed for this reason. He had a client, a convicted child killer, who confessed to him that he had killed another child, a girl who is still missing. Her mother was now, more than thirty years after the disappearance, still uncertain about her daughter’s fate.

“Although the lawyer himself had already retired and his client had died, he was still symbolically deleted”

The lawyer was in trouble of conscience. He violated his professional secrecy and told the mother what his client had told him, hoping to give her some peace of mind. Although his client had died years ago and the lawyer himself had already stopped working, he was still symbolically removed. This is a signal to other lawyers that professional secrecy will always apply.

Read also – Professional secrecy: ‘A few times I really had to bite my tongue’ >

Confidential information

Fortunately, I don’t experience it as intensely as with this example, but I also walk around with enough confidential information. I keep those stories to myself and I have no problem with that. I don’t struggle with a bad conscience and it doesn’t keep me awake. Of course I sometimes see a client invoke his right to remain silent while I know he is guilty, but I see that as his ‘good’ right. Very occasionally I discuss confidential information with a colleague, but never at the kitchen table in the evening.

Professional secrecy is sometimes difficult to explain to adults, let alone children. I take some lawyer qualities with me in my upbringing. I always tell my sons that clicking is not okay. They are not allowed to share their friends’ secrets. But I also emphasize that if something makes them feel bad, they can always vent to me. Mama has professional secrecy as they know very well, so that comes in handy.

“My sons ask: do you know things about crooks?”

When my children see a criminal case on TV, they ask if I also ‘know things’ about the ‘crook’. They are still too young to appreciate discretion and secrecy. They both want to become professional football players, although I can see my eldest son pleading in a toga later. He is critical, steadfast and quick-witted, all qualities for a budding criminal lawyer.”

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