JUNE 25, 2020 – When I started law school, I figured the easiest subject would be “ethics.” I thought I had a solid handle on “right” and “wrong” and would know intuitively such foundational rules as, you can’t lie and you can’t steal from client funds in your firm’s trust account. Little did I appreciate that “ethics” can be one of the most complicated and challenging aspects of practicing law.
Earlier this week, as part of my state’s licensing requirement, I watched a three-hour webcast on legal ethics. The course revealed the many landmines buried in one’s everyday practice. Often the minefield relates to confidentiality and conflicts of interest; where information a lawyer obtains about one client winds up being adverse to the interests of second client, when no conflict or foreseeable conflict existed at the time the lawyer agreed to represent the second client.
As the course unfolded, the primary presenter parsed the applicable Rules of Professional Responsibility and led us through detailed analyses of real-life examples of ethical challenges. By the end of the three hours, my brain was in overdrive. My regular legal work—drafting and reviewing contracts; advising clients in buy/sell deals—seemed unusually simple.
On my walk following the webinar, I reflected on some of the featured scenarios. My thoughts broadened to the identification and resolution of ethics issues confronted by lawyers; the stringent rules that we must follow to avoid bad things (embarrassment at best; disbarment at worst); the over-arching theme of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety.
I then turned to the record of the top lawyer in the land—United States Attorney General William Barr. I contemplated the editorial in last Sunday’s edition of The New York Times: “William Barr’s Perversion of Justice.” Therein lies a summary of his egregious behavior and what a mockery he makes of the efforts of bar associations, review boards, and practitioners across this country to adhere to the highest standards of ethical behavior.
The larger issue is the perversion of ethical standards in the White House, for Barr is merely the enabler of the defiantly unethical behavior of a sociopathic president with no moral or ethical compass of any kind.
What long-term damage is being wreaked by Trump and Barr remains to be seen. What worries me are the 30% to 50% of my fellow citizens who acquiesce in it, actively support it, or conclude that if Trump is “Tweedle-dum(b),” Biden is “Tweedle-dee.”
What in the world?! How can it be that so many people have such lowered standards of ethical behavior? Fallen ethical standards are quite apart from policy differences or ideological divides. The Trump-Barr regime’s contempt for ethics strikes at the foundations of our society. If we allow the assault to continue, we risk all that rests upon those foundations. Whether your political inclinations are liberal, conservative or in between, nothing much matters if the leader of the land and his most effective henchman hold ethics in utter contempt.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
