I had the pleasure of attending a CLE given by Dana Hrelic the other day where a question was raised as to whether a lawyer could publicly comment on a client matter that had been resolved by a jury verdict. Many of us have done that — issued a press release or spoken to the press about a victory. It's good for business and gets us props with some of our peers.

A member of the audience suggested that since such information was of public record, there should be no problem. Dana, correctly in my view, replied that while this analysis was both intuitively correct and a matter of common sense, our Rules of Professional Conduct don't have a "generally known" exception to the blanket duty of confidentiality. Some in the audience responded, as did Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, that if that's the law, "the law is a ass—a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience."