The Chamber of Advocates shall be offering direction to lawyers on handling the threat to professional secrecy currently posed by public authorities in the course of criminal investigations.

This age-old principle, so fundamental to the profession and always closely guarded by the courts, is facing a threat and needs to be safeguarded, chamber president Louis de Gabriele said on Friday in his speech at the start of the forensic year. 

“I honestly never thought that I would have to defend such a fundamental legal principle in 2021,” said de Gabriele, adding that later on Friday the chamber is to publish a practice note intended to guide its members when facing this current threat. 

Professional secrecy is not a privilege for the lawyer but a right of the client when seeking legal advice while enabling the lawyer to obtain a clear picture of the situation. It is a principle that lies at the heart of lawyer-client relationship and a crucial element in any state which truly believes in the rule of law, he said.

Members of the judiciary at the opening ceremony of the forensic year. Photo: Jonathan Borg

De Gabriele added that unless a client is safe in the knowledge that he may confide freely in his lawyer, the person might hold back half the truth. Any communication serving a criminal purpose clearly falls beyond this principle. 

He said that recent events in the public domain have clearly shown that this closely guarded principle is being threatened.

Search warrants issued in the course of magisterial inquires endow officers with wide and sometimes disproportionate, powers and no distinction is made when the targeted person happens to be a lawyer who is bound by the oath of his profession to safeguard his client. 

In case of suspect criminal activity, investigators wanting to get hold of communication between a lawyer and his client should first try to seize any relative documentation from the client rather than the lawyer. 

Appropriate measures may be adopted to ensure that professional secrecy is safeguarded in such circumstances and the chamber is open to debate with the competent authorities, the Attorney General and inquiring magistrates on the subject, de Gabriele said.

He said that another debate which kicked off years ago and is still ongoing concerned the regulation of the legal profession.

The longer this dragged on, without any action being taken to regulate the profession in a serious and comprehensive manner, the more we will lag behind, he added.

A comprehensive plan and clear vision, rather than piecemeal amendments, are necessary to bring the profession in line with the socio-economic realities of an ever increasing globalised world, said de Gabriele, calling once again upon all stakeholders, especially the chamber and the Justice Ministry, to engage in a serious commitment in this direction.