Local Government Attorneys

I did a huge amount of reading this summer for a paper I wrote for the journal <i>Public Integrity</i> (and otherwise). The first piece of reading I'm going to talk about is one of the otherwise.<br>
<br>
Washington University in St. Louis law professor Kathleen Clark's
law review article, "<a href="http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/85/5/Clark.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">Confidentiality

Over the weekend, I read a <a href="http://works.bepress.com/rebecca_roiphe/1/&quot; target="”_blank”">March 2010 draft</a>
of Rebecca Roiphe's law review article "The Ethics of Willful
Ignorance," which appeared in the <a href="https://articleworks.cadmus.com/geolaw/zs000111.html&quot; target="”_blank”"><i>Georgetown

<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21552170&quot; target="”_blank”">The Schumpeter
column in this week's <i>Economist</i></a> 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 government.<br>
<br>

Music to my ears in <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/11-CV-562-PLD-166-2012-02…; target="”_blank”">an
order yesterday</a> 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

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 declaratory judgment due to its cost to the county and the likelihood that a decision would be too late to serve its purpose (see <a href="http://ww

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.<br>
<br>

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?<br>
<br>
Actually, zealousness does not really have a place in the practice of government law. The limits on zealousness by government
lawyers was just confirmed by a New York lawyer

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 contracts and allegations of influence
peddling. The city had spent $36.5 million to develop the old Shipyards
site, with nothing to show for it. It had spent another $26.8 million
on the courthouse with similar results.