JK Rowling Publishing under a Pseudonym

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by Apache

I have to agree with Harry. And I find it uplifting that she is donating all of the money from the Russell's and all of her royalties to such a worthy Charity.
Apache

I am with Harry and Apache. In this case it doesn't seem to be a big deal. He shared that she was using a pen name, that information leaked, she saw book sales increase. What is the big deal?

The big deal is that when you work with an attorney or a doctor or an accountant you are trusting them with very personal information that could be used to harm you. You enter into that relationship with an expectation that they will not share any of the informtion you are giving them without your consent.

Any information. Even a pen name.

This seems like a minor breech for the reasons above but to JKR it was not a minor breech. It sounded like the was planning on using this pen name to try and establish herself as a credible author in a totally different field. This was obviously important enough to her that she was willing to go to the trouble of establishing the pen name and working the book through the regular process to try and get it published.

If she only cared about the money, she would have published it under her name known that it would sell (as it has) and not cared. Instead she created this name and worked with her advisors to keep it quiet. Since she had started this process before the release of Deathly Hallows, I think it is safe to say that she was taking it seriously.

So it was a breech of her confidence and that is very important. Had information been revealed that was innocent that came back and helped convict someone of a crime, we would be up in arms. Lawyers are suppose to keep their mouths shut and reveal nothing. There are some exceptions, I am not familiar with the list, but telling your wife a cool secret is not on that list.

[K. Molen]

I would love to hear what Judith Callegari has to say about all of this. Why did she spill the beans on Twitter? I'm guessing she got caught up in the thrill of knowing this secret, and that she didn't understand how big of a deal it was to reveal something like that on Twitter, but I'd be curious to hear her reasoning.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

I would love to hear what Judith Callegari has to say about all of this. Why did she spill the beans on Twitter? I'm guessing she got caught up in the thrill of knowing this secret, and that she didn't understand how big of a deal it was to reveal something like that on Twitter, but I'd be curious to hear her reasoning.

"Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead."

I'm sure it was a thrill to have that bit of special knowledge, of course.
But add to that, I'm sure at some level she figured that if the lawyer told her this, then it must not have been a big secret.
That's part of the seriousness of what the lawyer did wrong. Whether or not tubemonkey thinks the breach was "minor" it served to undermine the foundation of trust and expectation of confidentiality that the system depends on.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

That's part of the seriousness of what the lawyer did wrong. Whether or not tubemonkey thinks the breach was "minor" it served to undermine the foundation of trust and expectation of confidentiality that the system depends on.

Not all breaches warrant the same punishment. He lucked out and only got a fine. I would've suspended his license for a year in addition to the fine.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Not all breaches warrant the same punishment. He lucked out and only got a fine. I would've suspended his license for a year in addition to the fine.

That's the penalty that the court imposed. I don't know if the professional body that governs the British legal profession, the Law Society, will take any additional action, but it's entirely possible that they will.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Not all breaches warrant the same punishment. He lucked out and only got a fine. I would've suspended his license for a year in addition to the fine.

Ah, you were only commenting on Harry's comment about him being kicked out of the profession?

Then I agree, though, rather than characterizing it as a 'minor' thing, I would say "This is a major thing, but the circumstances and end-result in this instance warrant him getting a second chance."

ApK

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's the penalty that the court imposed. I don't know if the professional body that governs the British legal profession, the Law Society, will take any additional action, but it's entirely possible that they will.

Was it really? I thought they made a deal without letting the court decide. At least the article gave that impression.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Not all breaches warrant the same punishment. He lucked out and only got a fine. I would've suspended his license for a year in addition to the fine.

Why not? If you have a scale you will have people taking chances that they will not get caught if they think the punishment is low enough. To me it seems obvious that the only way to get people to respect this kind of things is to have a very hard punishment and no exceptions.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by ApK

Ah, you were only commenting on Harry's comment about him being kicked out of the profession?

Then I agree, though, rather than characterizing it as a 'minor' thing, I would say "This is a major thing, but the circumstances and end-result in this instance warrant him getting a second chance."

ApK

Yeah, as I mentioned upthread, my state's supreme court recently disbarred someone for disclosing client confidences. It was worse than this case - the lawyer wrote a book that included the confidences, rather than just disclosing them to his gossipy wife. On the other hand, no individual disclosure was as bad as this disclosure - they were about things that happened 10 years or so ago and were more along the lines of being somewhat embarrassing rather than disclosing something that the client *specifically* wanted to be kept secret.

Still, the larger difference is that this lawyer just told his wife, without suspecting that she would send a tweet to a reporter; in the case in my state, the lawyer himself made the information public.

I do feel bad for Rowlings, though - she must have thought that it would be nice to write some books and get some feedback without being known as author of HP.

[Namekuseijin]

authors usually do it to see how worth their writing really is without the aid a renowed name brings along...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Was it really? I thought they made a deal without letting the court decide. At least the article gave that impression.

Perhaps you're right - I don't know the details - but the article I quoted says "the court heard that Rowling had been left feeling dismayed and distressed", so it appears as if the case did get to court.

[K. Molen]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Still, the larger difference is that this lawyer just told his wife...

It's a bit worse than that. The lawyer told his wife's best friend, not just his wife. Presumably he also told his wife, but I haven't read anything to that effect. The wife can be understood, if not condoned, but to tell someone who isn't even family is just downright stupid and/or careless.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

It's a bit worse than that. The lawyer told his wife's best friend, not just his wife. Presumably he also told his wife, but I haven't read anything to that effect. The wife can be understood, if not condoned, but to tell someone who isn't even family is just downright stupid and/or careless.

Big shot syndrome.
Common among twits, deadly among twittering twitterati.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I do feel bad for Rowlings, though - she must have thought that it would be nice to write some books and get some feedback without being known as author of HP.

Yes, though I imagine the damages in that would be rather had to quantify.
There are not too many situations where the most visible impact of a lawyers breach of confidence on the client was that it caused the her to MAKE millions more dollars.
I fully realize that the money is not the issue here, but it's funny.

[speakingtohe]

I think that the lawyer has also breached trust with his firm, which could cause them to lose business. I would not be hiring them in anything requiring secrecy if he was still employed there.

And it would make it possibly bring on a bit of wisecracking, the next time he or his colleagues refused to impart confidential information.

And as the extent of the harm done was not evident when the secret was disclosed, I don't think the penalty should depend on that although I know it does apply in other areas such as criminal law.

It says a lot that Rowling's family or friends or publisher, who may have known the secret and may have had something to gain by disclosing it, didn't, and a lawyer who can only lose by doing so could not resist the chance to be a bigshot person in the know.

Helen