Law
Chinese Walls are used in law firms when one part of the firm, representing a party on a deal or litigation, is separated from another part with contrary interests or with confidential information from an adverse party. In the United Kingdom, a law firm may represent competing parties in a suit, but only in strictly defined situations and when individual fee earners do not act for both sides In the United States, at least in Ohio, it is illegal for members of the same law firm to represent both sides of a legal conflict regardless of whether the individuals communicate about the case. To do so is considered a conflict of interest and can result in disciplinary action against the attorney or the firm that employs him or her. Even Legal Aid cannot represent both sides of a conflict.
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Famous quotes containing the word law:
“If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one’s duty toward one’s own subjects; for thus one exposes them to the law of retribution.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)