Friday follow up, follow up: Sick of TIKD yet? If so, a promise of something new for next week

I know they warn people about going to wells too often, but though the Roadshow has now wrapped up your intrepid blogger is a bit exhausted.

So this is the well where we find ourselves today … a further mention of the ongoing TIKD situation.  It is both a selfish and an altruistic offering.

The always on-point Joan Rogers over at the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct has put out a very thorough piece this week on all of the TIKD dustup in Florida and has spoken to many of the players, shed more light on that earlier state court action I wrote about, and otherwise put together a compelling narrative of the developments.  You can read that piece here.

She was also kind enough to let me weigh in and quote me as to why I happen to think this situation is a pretty meaningful one on the legal landscape.

Now, about that promise of something new, among the many insightful questions I received from lawyers during the course of my roadshow was one involving the continuing unfairness of situations where lawyers get blasted online by former clients but end up being prohibited by the ethics rules from responding to online criticism because of the obligation of client confidentiality and the lack of clear authority to say that the online venting waives both privilege and obligations of confidentiality.

This week the ABA has put out what could turn out to be a very important new ethics opinion that might provide a roadmap for some relief and fairness or might not.  I don’t want to spoil it for you now.  If you want to go study it ahead of time, you should be able to do so here.  Even if you don’t, I promise (threaten?) to write some more about it next week, and perhaps to even juxtapose that one with another recent ABA ethics opinion also issued this month and also relating to the world of online information but that looks at things from the perspective of judges rather than lawyers.

If you want to study up on that one, you can read it here.