Paralegal ethics runs on both sides of the desk: the professional-conduct rules written for the lawyer you work under, and the codes paralegal associations publish for the profession itself.
NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility — first adopted in May 1975 and organized into 10 canons — sets out a paralegal's own obligations: disclosing your status, protecting client confidences, disclosing conflicts, and staying inside the work a lawyer properly delegates and supervises.
Why ethics rules matter for paralegals
Paralegal work sits inside a lawyer's professional obligations.
In the ABA's Model Rules, the provision on nonlawyer assistance is Rule 5.3.
Rule 5.3(a) requires partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority to make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures giving reasonable assurance that nonlawyers' conduct is compatible with the lawyer's professional obligations, and Rule 5.3(b) puts a separate duty on any lawyer with direct supervisory authority over a nonlawyer.
That structure is why your own conduct is never only your own affair.
Under Rule 5.3(c), a lawyer is responsible for a nonlawyer's conduct that would violate the Rules if done by a lawyer when the lawyer orders or ratifies it, or when a partner or supervisor knows of it in time to avoid or mitigate the consequences but fails to take reasonable remedial action.
An ethics slip that looks small from the paralegal desk can therefore put the supervising lawyer in the wrong under the lawyer's own rules.
The rules also say how you are meant to learn all this.
Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 lists secretaries, investigators, law student interns and paraprofessionals among the assistants the duty covers, whether employees or independent contractors, and says lawyers must instruct them on ethics, especially confidentiality.
The instruction requirement is where a paralegal feels Rule 5.3 most directly.
There is no single overseeing authority to point to: NFPA says "There is no single authority in the United States which oversees the paralegal profession."
A paralegal's ethics obligations therefore arrive from the lawyer's conduct rules, the association codes, and the firm policy built on both — this page walks through each.
If you are still mapping the role itself, the paralegal career guide covers duties, settings and credentials.
Confidentiality: what paralegals must protect
NALA's Canon 7 requires a paralegal to protect client confidences, and the day-to-day job runs on client information.
BLS lists the occupation's typical work as investigating case facts, researching laws and regulations, gathering and organizing documents, drafting correspondence and documents such as contracts, obtaining affidavits, helping at trial with exhibits and notes, filing documents with courts and agencies, and scheduling interviews, meetings and depositions.
Case facts, documents and correspondence from that list are the kind of material a confidentiality duty protects.
The lawyer's rules treat the subject as instruction priority, not an afterthought: Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 says lawyers must instruct their assistants on ethics, especially confidentiality.
Inside a firm, that instruction is the kind of thing a written confidentiality policy settles — who may open a file, what stays inside the team, where documents travel — and a paralegal's part is to treat client matters as off-limits conversation anywhere the policy does not plainly allow them.
Be honest about what the published sources settle.
They record the duty and who must teach it; they do not grade individual situations.
Where a case feels grey — a document that names a company you are about to interview with, a matter that follows a lawyer you follow — the person to ask is your supervising lawyer, because the confidentiality rules are the lawyer's to apply.
Conflicts of interest when changing firms
A firm change is where paralegal conflicts of interest stop being theoretical.
NALA's Canon 8 requires disclosing conflicts with a prospective employer, which puts the disclosure obligation on you at exactly the moment a new firm is considering you.
In practice, the disclosure turns on the work you did at your current firm: the clients and matters that could overlap with the new firm's.
The lawyer's rules then decide what happens next.
Comment [4] to ABA Model Rule 1.10 says a nonlawyer's conflict — the comment names paralegals and legal secretaries as its examples — is not imputed to the firm under 1.10(a), but such persons ordinarily must be screened from any personal participation in the matter.
In plain terms: your prior-firm conflict is not imputed to the new firm, and the ordinary response is to screen you from any personal participation in the matter.
Preparation makes the conversation routine rather than awkward: keep your matter history current, name the overlaps yourself, and raise the disclosure early enough that the firm can staff around it.
If you are actively searching, that preparation sits behind every application — including the paralegal jobs you answer on a board like this one.
One honest boundary: the sources above state the disclosure duty in NALA's canon and the model-rule treatment in Comment [4].
What they do not settle is how the rule in force in a particular state treats a paralegal's conflict, or what an individual firm's policy requires — confirm with the firm and, where it matters, the state bar where you work.
NALA and NFPA codes of ethics
NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, first adopted in May 1975, is organized into 10 canons.
Canon 1 bars the unauthorized practice of law and the core lawyer acts: establishing attorney-client relationships, setting fees, giving legal opinions or advice, and representing a client before a court or agency unless authorized.
The UPL limits behind that canon get a page of their own.
Canon 3 is the delegation canon: a paralegal may perform any task properly delegated and supervised by an attorney, as long as the attorney stays responsible to the client, keeps a direct relationship with the client and takes professional responsibility for the work product.
Canons 5, 7 and 8 carry the disclosure and loyalty duties — disclose your status as a paralegal at the outset of any professional relationship with a client, attorney, court or agency, or the public; protect client confidences; and disclose conflicts with a prospective employer.
NFPA runs its own credentialing: the Paralegal CORE Competency Exam (PCCE) for early-career and entry-level paralegals, earning the CRP designation, and the Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam (PACE) for experienced paralegals, earning the RP (Registered Paralegal) designation.
It also maintains a model code of ethics of its own — our research did not capture its current text, so read it on NFPA's own pages before quoting it.
The associations, their memberships and their credentials are compared in our guide to paralegal associations.
Verify the current text before you quote a code
Common ethics traps
The traps below are the canons' plain requirements meeting an ordinary week.
None of them is exotic, which is what makes them worth naming.
- A client's direct question. Canon 1 bars giving legal opinions or advice, and the boundary it draws — the unauthorized practice of law — is mapped in full in our guide to UPL limits.
- Work outside the delegation. Canon 3 authorizes tasks properly delegated and supervised by an attorney; a matter the lawyer never delegated sits outside that structure, however routine the task feels.
- The paralegal label left out. Canon 5 requires disclosing your status at the outset of any professional relationship with a client, an attorney, a court or agency, or the public.
- Loose talk about client matters. Canon 7's requirement to protect client confidences is why case knowledge stays inside the team rather than becoming a story.
- A firm change without the conflicts conversation. Canon 8 requires disclosing conflicts with a prospective employer — surface them during the hiring process, before staffing is set.
- Bonus structures that touch one case. Model Rule 5.4(a) bars a lawyer or law firm from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, subject to four listed exceptions; one exception expressly allows a firm to include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan based in whole or in part on profit-sharing. The obligation sits with the lawyer or firm; the exception covers a compensation or retirement plan that includes nonlawyer employees and is based in whole or in part on a profit-sharing arrangement — the structure the model rule spells out.
Career information, not legal advice. Confirm the current NALA code with NALA, NFPA's code with NFPA, and the conduct rules for your jurisdiction with the state bar where you work.