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So I feel pretty dumb asking this, but I'd feel even dumber asking the firm or filling out the form incorrectly.

My SA firm emailed me a conflicts form that I have to fill out and return, and it says to list "all law-related work, representations or matters in which you participated to any degree in a legal or law-related capacity." It also asks to identify "all matters in which you obtained important client confidential or material non-public information."

Am I really supposed to list every single case my boss worked on as a solo practitioner while I was the paralegal, and each case I had as a legal intern at a nonprofit? These jobs were 1000s of miles away from the firm, and almost every client was a low-income client applying for some type of immigration relief. Meanwhile, the firm is a huge corporate firm. I'm not even sure how I'd go about obtaining this information.

Thanks for indulging my naive questions.

Better to disclose than not to disclose. But to save time, perhaps call up HR and ask very nicely for them to give you some guidance.

eerie_erie wrote:Better to disclose than not to disclose. But to save time, perhaps call up HR and ask very nicely for them to give you some guidance.

I would ask them how they'd like you to handle it given the situation.

My current job is prosecution side. I used to work as a legal secretary in a small indigent defense firm, in another city several hours away. I mean, there were hundreds of cases. They told me just to let them know if anything ever came up that I'd worked on something related in the past.
In a year, there has been one case. We screened me off that case and it was fine.

Just ask them.

Just ask whether they need that information. Express that you're worried that there might not be a good record of it, so you thought you'd check with them first. My sense is that at this point they're more fishing for things like whether your dad is a circuit court judge or whether you happened to get confidential information on a pending patent, rather than if you sat in on an interview with an immigration law client.

They're gonna work with you. List who you worked for, the general nature of the practice, note that you don't have the names of every client of your former employer, but let them know that you can obtain more info if they need it.

They'll figure out pretty quickly that there's little chance of a conflict and probably just tell you to immediately tell them if you recognize any names of former clients in stuff as it comes across your desk.

Nothing to stress. They can always ask for more info if they want it.

OP here - thanks for the advice!