Local Government Attorneys

Conflicts of Interest September 5, 2013

Summer Reading: Government Lawyers and Confidentiality

I did a huge amount of reading this summer for a paper I wrote for the journal Public Integrity (and otherwise). The first piece of reading I'm going to talk about is one of the otherwise. Washington University in St. Louis law professor Kathleen Clark's law review article, "Confidentiality Norms a…

Local Government Practice May 14, 2012

Willful Ignorance by Government Attorneys

Over the weekend, I read a March 2010 draft of Rebecca Roiphe's law review article "The Ethics of Willful Ignorance," which appeared in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Volume 24, Issue 1 (Winter 2011). Willful (or deliberate) ignorance (or blindness) describes what happens when someone has …

Local Government Practice April 13, 2012

Chief Legal Officers, Local Government Attorneys, and Ethics Officers

The Schumpeter column in this week's Economist talks about the corporate chief legal officer (CLO), who due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's requirements has become a major figure at the top of every big corporation. Much as the city or county attorney is a major figure at the top of every local governm…

February 17, 2012

Federal Decision on Citizens and the Attorney-Client Privilege

Music to my ears in an order yesterday from the federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, in a case involving an unsuccessful attempt by certain Wisconsin state legislators to claim the attorney-client privilege with respect to documents relating to redistricting. What resonates so nicel…

June 28, 2010

A Second Constitutionality Opinion in Broward County, Just Like the First

According to a letter (attached; see below) from a Fort Lauderdale attorney hired to provide a second opinion on the constitutionality of a lobbying provision in the proposed Broward County ethics code, the Broward county attorney (who wrote the first opinion) has decided not to continue seeking a …

Local Government Practice March 31, 2010

A Government Attorney's Discretion

Georgia seems intent on providing an entire course on the ethical obligations of government attorneys. This time it's the obligations of the state's top government attorney, the attorney general. There's also an issue concerning special government attorneys. The governor wants to file a suit to cha…

Local Government Practice March 6, 2009

The Government Attorney and Zealousness

Lawyers are supposed to zealously represent their clients. After all, Canon 7 of the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility says, "A lawyer should represent a client zealously within the bounds of the law." This requirement applies as much to government lawyers as it does to private lawyers, right…

Resources & Learning February 8, 2009

Folio Article: Miller's Crossing

When Mayor John Peyton decided to hire Carla Miller as Jacksonville’s Ethics Officer in 2007, the city was in crisis. A grand jury was investigating violations of state open-meeting laws by nearly every member of the former City Council. The FBI had begun sniffing around JaxPort, probing dubious co…

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