The Burden Of Keeping In-House Secrets

You hear a lot when you work in-house.

secret whisper shush finger to lips sh ssh sssh ShhhAs attorneys, we are no strangers to keeping secrets.

Attorney-client privilege is ingrained in our brains at an early stage. And by and large, it is a fairly easy and straightforward edict to comply with. Especially for those who work in a firm where you may never even see the client or only know those details the managing partner permits you to see, it can be an easy rule to uphold.

However, when you are in-house, you are often brought into a myriad of issues you may wish you had been left out of to begin with.

Even though I would hold myself out as a healthcare attorney, I am often brought into many issues that extend far beyond my area of expertise. From being consulted on potential employee terminations to, for whatever reason, being roped into the latest office gossip so legal can have knowledge of it, I often know far more about my colleagues than I wish I did.

Several weeks ago one of our executives informed me they wished to fire one of their direct reports. The direct report was a well-known and well-liked figure in the company, so the news was a bit shocking to me.

However, the direct report was also an at-will employee and there were no legal barriers to his dismissal. Although there were no barriers to the dismissal of an at-will employee, she felt it necessary to consult with legal prior to taking any action.

After asking a couple rather high-level and routine HR questions, I blessed the dismissal and took my leave only to bump into the employee in question a few steps down the hallway. While I was not bound by any form of attorney-client privilege at that point, I knew there was absolutely no way I could tell that employee they had better reconsider their summer vacation plans.

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Worse yet, over the next three weeks, I found myself in meetings or casual conversation with the employee no less than a half-dozen times. I had to smile and nod as they talked about their department’s two-year plan even though I knew they would not be around to see it implemented. And when the proverbial ax was finally dropped, I could not help feeling a little like the Godfather who blessed a hit.

While employee terminations are a more obvious example, in-house often gets pulled into much more mundane gossip middle-level managers believe legal should be informed of.

Which executive is sleeping with their assistant? We know about it. Bob in technology who smokes marijuana over his lunch break? We know about it. The average employee going through a rather difficult divorce and ugly child custody battle? Sadly, we know about it.

Again, it is not that we actively seek out dirt on our colleagues. Rather, it is sometimes baffling the number of times an employee approaches our in-house team with information they believe we need to know which ultimately amounts to little more than the standard office gossip.

And whether it is some form of Murphy’s Law or fate having a good laugh, you can bet once you find out gossip on a colleague, you will run into them around the office more than you ever had before.

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So for those looking to make the in-house jump or aspire to work in-house one day, do not say I didn’t warn you. Keeping attorney-client privilege is one thing, keeping the confidence of who is an adulterer, a toker, or a divorcee is another matter altogether.


Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.