ABSTRACT

Like other public employees, the identification of important ethical competencies for lawyers in public service roles such as that of government attorney is not an easy process. With little debate, government lawyers must comply with traditional public corruption prohibitions that apply widely to all government employees. These include bribery, extortion, theft of government property, misuse of nonpublic information for private gain, and a spectrum of financial conflict-of-interest matters. Beyond traditional types of compliance-based or rule-driven ethics issues, government lawyers have a clear ethical obligation to take steps to ensure that their agencies and other government officials uphold constitutional and democratic values. Important democratic values include honesty and integrity, justice and due process, transparency and openness, efficiency and effectiveness, and civility. Yet, the evolution of modern legal ethics rules has had little to do with the development of the ethical competencies of lawyers inside or outside of government (Lerner 2006, 785). The need to protect consumers of legal services from unscrupulous lawyers drove the movement for stricter compliance-based ethics rules.