Professor Deborah L. Rhode is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle commenting on whether there was a significant enough conflict of interest to dismiss the Ed Jew case:

Deborah Rhode, who heads Stanford Law School's Keck Center on Legal Ethics and the Legal Profession, said: "Especially in a criminal context - where people's lives and reputations are on the line - you want them to have total trust in their attorney. So you would want information about whatever transpired earlier to come from your lawyer and not read about it in discovery or a newspaper story."

Still, Rhode said that "it's hard to see how this could result in a dismissal."