Bruce Green was quoted in a Newsweek article about President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s claims that he secretly taped President Trump discussing payment to a former Playboy model.
By recording Trump possibly without his knowledge, Cohen may have violated ethics rules in New York City. Bruce Green, a professor of law at Fordham University, pointed to an opinion handed down by the New York City Bar’s ethics commission in 2003 that found “undisclosed taping as a routine practice is ethically impermissible. We further believe that attorneys should be extremely reluctant to engage in undisclosed taping and that, in assessing the need for it, attorneys should carefully consider whether their conduct, if it became known, would be considered by the general public to be fair and honorable.”
Green further noted an opinion from the American Bar Association in 2001 that stated a client can assume their lawyer is keeping records of their information but recordings greatly stretch the boundaries.
“The relationship of trust and confidence that clients need to have with their lawyers…likely would be undermined by a client’s discovery that, without his knowledge, confidential communications with his lawyer have been recorded by the lawyer,” the ABA opinion read.
“A reasonable client does not believe that when they are talking to their lawyer, even if the lawyer is giving business assistance, that the lawyer is tape-recording them for no apparent reason,” Green told Newsweek, while noting Cohen would not lose his legal license over recording a client without their knowledge.