Professional secrecy and the rules of searches and seizures in a lawyer's office. The case of the in-house lawyer

Tânia Vanessa Nunes Cardoso

Keywords

Secrecy; Lawyer in-house, search; seizure; NRDJ; AdC

Abstract

Lawyers as officers of justice are subject to specific duties, such as professional secrecy. This secrecy shall be preserved taking based on the public interest of the profession.

The concept of secrecy, its implications and consequences in case of breach thereof are issues that can not be taken lightly, but in this article they assume a secondary role - although not irrelevant - since the central object of this article is the analysis of asymmetries of rules for searches and seizures at the offices of in-house lawyers.  In the specific approach of competition law, depending on the investigations carried out by the AdC are based on the Competition Act or the TFEU.

These differences are illustrated always based on the binomial law / jurisprudence, either from EU or national.