In Melbourne the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants is fully underway, with a hefty case at its centre: the Lawyer X case.

If you’re not too sure what the case entails here’s a breakdown:

• Lawyer X is a Melbourne lawyer who has been registered as an informant with the police – providing the Victoria Police with confidential information deemed appropriate and necessary to share
• Lawyer X also previously represented some of Melbourne’s most notorious criminals
• Following Lawyer X, an additional 6 other lawyers have been revealed to be registered as police informants

So now it’s time to ask some heavy questions: mainly, can you trust a lawyer to uphold their duty of confidentiality to you as a client if they are also registered as a police informant?

To find out more about the ethical boundaries this case may or may not be crossing, Tess spoke with Dr Elyse Methven, lecturer in Law at the University of Technology, Sydney.