However, the involvement of lawyers in supporting the former president’s agenda highlights a troubling crisis within the legal profession. These lawyers, who allegedly violated numerous ethical rules and criminal laws, did not arise out of nowhere. They are a product of a profession that has undergone significant changes over the past four decades. These changes have resulted in a decrease in lawyers like Rosen who are willing to hold public roles and an increase in lawyers like Clark. Unless we address the structure of public lawyering and the professional path lawyers take, we not only risk losing an effective check against authoritarian power, but also potentially accelerate its consolidation.
Scandals involving presidential lawyers are not new. By the end of the Watergate revelations, 29 lawyers, including two of President Richard Nixon’s handpicked attorneys general, faced sanctions for enabling presidential misconduct and engaging in deceit. In response, both the government and professional associations implemented revolutionary reforms to strengthen the rule of law as a protection for constitutional democracy. The American Bar Association amended its influential model rules of professional ethics, emphasizing that lawyers working for any organization, including the government, have a duty to report unlawful acts committed by federal officials in the course of their work.
Similarly, for the first time, the A.B.A. mandated that all students in American law schools seeking A.B.A. accreditation must complete a course in professional responsibility before graduating. The intent was for every future American lawyer to be raised in an environment where ethical obligations, including heightened standards of truthfulness and candor, are ingrained.
Congress also considered substantial reforms in government lawyering, such as requiring the attorney general to belong to a different political party than the president or establishing complete independence for the attorney general from the executive branch. To prevent these drastic measures, President Gerald Ford’s attorney general established the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is responsible for reviewing allegations of legal or ethical violations by any employee within the department. This office still exists today, with bipartisan support aiming to ensure that government lawyers consistently uphold the highest standards of professionalism in public service.
The similarities between lawyer misconduct during Watergate and the present are apparent. John Eastman faces “moral turpitude” charges in California, while Rudy Giuliani faces disbarment in Washington, D.C. However, they are not the only ones, as numerous other lawyers who represented Mr. Trump in election litigation now face allegations of misconduct in state disciplinary proceedings across the country.
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