I’m a legal secretary in the real estate department of a large law firm in Silicon Valley. Big real estate clients who own land and big tech clients who want to lease space both come to us, and with land in this valley so limited, we will often run into a conflict of interest.
I’ve prepared hundreds of conflict waivers which must be signed by both clients. The waiver states, essentially, that even though we’ve represented the other party in the past, that past representation has nothing to do with the present work and no one is going to exchange information to the current client’s detriment.
We’d have way less business if we weren’t able to do this.