When one employee hears that this is going on, the news spreads like wildfire, and it ends up being included in a new lawsuit against the company or spreading employee discontent ("Can you believe how much he is making? I work harder than him."). They do care very much about compensation, discrimination, and potential M&A where they could lose their job. Employees do not really care about how many millions of dollars some transaction is worth with this subsidiary or that subsidiary in order to gossip about it. Every topic you can think of that the executives would not like being widely discussed by all the employees of the company goes through legal, and due to the "open layout," the entire office could hear every word of every discussion. I would regularly receive confidential telephone calls at my desk on projects that were not to be discussed with anyone in the company, such as M&A, employee claims, against the company, labor negotiations, executive compensation, and stock options for key employees. I once worked at a European company where, despite multiple, adamant objections from many people to the layout based on confidentiality reasons, only the GC and other officers had offices, and the other in-house attorneys were in cubes. Please tell me where I can call you back because I have to wander down the hall and find a conference room so that Suzy Blabbermouth won't repeat every word I will say in the conversation that we can't have quite yet." 3 So, yes, while there were conference rooms available, it was completely impractical to say, upon every phone call, "Hello, thanks for calling. Every phone conversation I had might as well have been had over the public address system. It was the secretary for the VP of HR, whom you would THINK would understand the words DISCRETION and CONFIDENTIALITY. My problem was that the person on the other side of my cubicle wall was not an attorney nor even a member of the legal department. The company decided that what makes Japanese automotive suppliers more profitable than their American counterparts must have something to do with putting everyone in a cubicle farm. I had this problem (yes, problem) twenty years ago. You might as well be at Starbucks if you are discussing what are normally legal items in a cubicle. I would not want to argue "privilege" when the opposing counsel asked if a particular conversation or meeting was in an open space subject to office eavesdropping. If you have to have a paper file open or your computer file open, you cannot keep going back and forth to a secure office all the time. You cannot have phone calls in open areas where you may be negotiating or discussing company confidential matters relating to business plans, litigation, HR, etc. Our GC took a stand and said that every attorney had to have a private office because of confidentiality. When the building was being reconfigured in the early '80s, the lawyers were going to lose individual offices (except for officers) to modern cubes of wood and cloth and open spaces. In one of my prior positions, our building, which was built in the early '60s (1960s), was very aluminum linoleum, tending toward what was then GSA 1 modern. "cubicle with walls but no door") arrangement? Wisdom of the Crowd: Response #1 Are there any ethical or audit reasons that would caution against allowing an attorney to have an office in an open or partially open seating (i.e. Some of this may affect the legal department. My company is engaging in some space planning that may involve rearranging office assignments for some staffers. Issues Associated with Working in an Open Office Environment Question: *( Permission was received from the ACC members quoted below prior to publishing their Forum comments in this Wisdom of the Crowd resource.) I. How to Preserve Confidentiality in an Open Office Environment Issues Associated with Working in an Open Office Environment II. (Published December 13, 2013, republished January 30, 2023). This resource was compiled from questions and responses posted on the forum of the Law Department Management and Small Law Department ACC Networks. This Wisdom of the Crowd (ACC member discussion) addresses concerns and tips for managing attorney-client privilege in an open office environment, under US law.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |