Is The SEC Encouraging Lawyers To Betray Clients?

Names of whistleblowers who provide information to the SEC normally are not made public, but in a recent case involving three whistleblowers who had split a $14 million bounty from the SEC, a dispute between two of them resulted in litigation and publicity. One of the three turned out to be an attorney and member of the New York state bar. No one has suggested the attorney in this case breached client confidences, but the case does suggest such a scenario is now plausible. DLA Piper attorneys Nick Morgan and Haley Greenberg look at what Dodd-Frank and the SEC say, in relation to what some state ethics committees have said, regarding this potentially troublesome issue.