At a pivotal moment during one of the Watergate hearings in 1973, ’s counsel, , asked a question that still resonates: “How in God’s name could so many lawyers get involved in something like this?”
In the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, the issue posed by Dean’s bracing question triggered a revolution in the legal profession. With so many lawyers involved in the Watergate criminal scheme, the American Bar Association started requiring law schools to provide ethics instruction or risk losing their accreditation. Exams began testing law students’ knowledge of intricate ethical rules.
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It wasn’t enough, if the past few weeks are any guide. In Fulton County, Georgia, three of former President ’s lawyers — Kenneth Chesebro, and — have now pleaded guilty to crimes in service of Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election and stay in the White House. All three have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the sprawling state RICO case against Trump. Two other Trump lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and , still face criminal charges in the Georgia case. They, along with Chesebro and Powell, have also been identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the related federal prosecution of Trump, which will probably benefit from the guilty pleas in Georgia.
The charges in the plea agreements vary, but the underlying story is the same: Fifty years after Watergate, the nation is once again confronted with a president who grossly abused the powers of his office, leading to criminal prosecutions. And once again, that abuse relied heavily on the involvement of lawyers. If Trump’s 2020 racket was “a coup in search of a legal theory,” as one federal judge put it, these lawyers provided the theory, and the phony facts to back it up. In doing so, they severely tarnished their profession.
How in God’s name? The question is no less urgent now than in 1973. Lawyers hold immense power within the American system of government, which depends on their expertise, and their integrity, to function. Those who abuse this power pose an even greater threat to the country than some random Capitol rioter, because we count on them not only to draft and execute the laws but to follow them — to lead by example. Everyone should behave ethically, of course, but despite the “Better-Call-Saul” reputation of so many lawyers, there’s nothing wrong with holding the profession to a higher standard.
One can view the guilty pleas by the Trump lawyers as evidence that the system is working as it should. They broke the law, they violated their ethical obligations, and now they are facing the music — not only in the courts, but from their chosen profession. Giuliani’s New York law license was suspended for his “demonstrably false and misleading statements” on Trump’s behalf; the District of Columbia’s bar association has recommended he lose his license there for good. Ellis was censured by Colorado state bar officials for violating the rule against “reckless, knowing, or intentional misrepresentations by attorneys,” and may face more severe consequences in light of her guilty plea.
Eastman, a former law-school dean and one of the key legal architects of Trump’s bonkers plot to stay in office, is in the final days of his California disbarment trial for ethical violations. Officials there have argued that his conduct was “fundamentally dishonest and intended to obstruct the lawful certification” of President Joe Biden’s victory.
All of this is to the good. Careers are rightly ruined over such behavior. It is also the exception to the rule. In the real world, lawyers rarely face any consequences for their legal or ethical transgressions.
“It’s a club,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal-ethics expert at New York University School of Law who has studied the profession’s opaque and…
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