The news that an otherwise-reputable British law firm was responsible for blabbing J.K. Rowling’s secret authorship of a novel raises the question of how law firms try to keep secrets. In the Rowlings case, a member of Russells Solicitors told his wife, who told a girlfriend who tweeted a reporter pal on Fleet Street that the author known as Robert Galbraith was really Rowlings. What the heck! Can’t we do better than that? Rowling is angry, Russells is deeply embarrassed and the lawyer, Chris Gossage, has to wonder whether he will ever have the confidence of his profession again. There are no records of course about how Stikemans or Goodmans train lawyers to shut up. Presumably there is a need-to-know rule in place for anything that matters. That would mean that a lawyer is playing with dismissal when he (or she) pillow-talks such information to the bed-partner, friend and help-mate. Some people can do it. But we all know the genetic need to blurt out the things we know is really strong.
