# Would a lawyer call the police in this situation?



## ironpony (Aug 30, 2018)

For my story the main character wants to know what really happened in a case, and wants to know privileged information, that the police cannot get their hands on legally, cause it's privileged.

I can write it so that either the lawyer's computer is hacked, or is file cabinet is broken into.  However, would the lawyer report the break in, once he finds out?  Cause if he gets the police to investigate, to find out who broke in, they will be snooping around a computer or file cabinet, with files in that contain privileged information on clients.

So would that be betraying the client's trust, and therefore, the lawyer would not tell the rest of the firm, and not report it?  Or what do you think?


----------



## Bloggsworth (Aug 31, 2018)

The police would be investigating the break-in/hacking, they have no need to read any files, indeed, they wouldn't be allowed to, so the solicitor/attorney could remove them from the scene.

Tracking back, you seem to be asking forum members to do a lot of your work for you.


----------



## ironpony (Sep 1, 2018)

Sorry I lost touch with some of the lawyers I asked before and they didn't get back to me when asking them.


----------



## patskywriter (Sep 1, 2018)

ironpony said:


> Sorry I lost touch with some of the lawyers I asked before and they didn't get back to me when asking them.



With all due respect, it could be that they’re also getting tired of your questions. Maybe you should take a break. People don’t like being pestered constantly. Why don’t you do some writing and see if you can make some progress before coming up with another question?


----------



## Olly Buckle (Sep 1, 2018)

Your obsession with accuracy seems just that, an obsession. Things like this will vary from police force to police force and lawyer to lawyer, depending how much the latter trusts the former. That could vary according to his practice and clients and according to the geographical location. But apart from the question being unanswerable in those terms I also take it that you are writing fiction? In that case anything goes, people include dragons and unicorns in fiction, never mind bending the rules a little, your readers are not going to phone their lawyer and police friends to check your characters are reacting in the politically correct way, just make it believable. In fiction that is not done by making every detail correct, at the time of reading the aforesaid dragons and unicorns are believable if the author is up to speed.


----------



## ironpony (Sep 1, 2018)

Okay thanks.  It's just if I write it so that the client tells the lawyer not to call the police cause that would be breaking the client's trust, and the lawyer decides not to, I was worried the reader might not believe that the lawyer would not call just cause the client demanded him not to.  Perhaps the lawyer fears the client and knows he is dangerous though as well.


----------



## Olly Buckle (Sep 1, 2018)

> Perhaps the lawyer fears the client and knows he is dangerous though as well.



A perfectly plausible reason for a lawyer to decide to respect client confidentiality, see you can do it if you wish. You are God in your book, you can make anything happen and the people of any sort you want, the difficult bit is not being accurate with all the facts, it is entertaining and engaging the reader. Do that and they will follow you and accept everything.


----------

