Legal and Ethical Standards, Professional Conduct
What this domain tests
How a licensed investigator behaves when the client's interest, the law, and the truth pull in different directions. Expect questions on confidentiality, conflicts, deception limits, and candor in reports and testimony.
Core standards
- Confidentiality: case information belongs to the client and travels to the client's attorney; do not discuss cases, use them for marketing, or disclose without authorization or legal compulsion.
- Conflicts: decline matters where a prior client's confidences would be used against them, or where you have a personal stake.
- Deception limits: pretext is not a blank check. Impersonating law enforcement, government agents, or the subject's own bank is prohibited, and obtaining financial or telephone records by false pretenses is a federal crime.
- Candor: reports and testimony must separate observation from inference and must not be shaded to please the payer.
- Client instruction never overrides law. A client cannot authorize trespass, unauthorized computer access, or harassment.
Worked example
A client asks you to call his bank posing as him to obtain statements. Reasoning: obtaining customer information from a financial institution under false pretenses is prohibited federally and under Maine practice standards, and the client's consent does not authorize identity deception against a third party. The lawful route is a subpoena issued through the client's attorney, or the client obtaining his own records.
Traps
- Treating "the client told me to" as a defense.
- Writing conclusions the evidence does not support, then defending them on the stand.
- Discussing a case on social media or in a shared office.
Key points
- Confidentiality survives the end of the engagement.
- Run a conflict check before accepting a matter.
- Pretext cannot include impersonating police, government, or a subject's own institution.
- Financial and phone records require lawful process, not deception.
- Reports must distinguish facts observed from opinions formed.