In a
blog post last week, I listed the many reasons why city and
county attorneys should not be providing ethics advice. One of those
reasons was that "legal advice and ethics advice require different
skill sets." But I limited this part of my analysis to saying
that "A legal
adviser sticks to the letter of the law, and is always on the
lookout for loopholes that her client can take advantage of."
In her new book, Lawyers As Leaders (Oxford University Press, 2013), Stanford Law professor Deborah L. Rhode looks not only at lawyers' skill sets, but at many other characteristics of lawyers that hamper their success as leaders. These same characteristics tend to hamper their involvement in government ethics programs. This is a very serious problem, because most of the people who are most important to the establishment and effective functioning of a local government ethics program — elected officials, government attorneys, and ethics commission staff members — are lawyers.
In her new book, Lawyers As Leaders (Oxford University Press, 2013), Stanford Law professor Deborah L. Rhode looks not only at lawyers' skill sets, but at many other characteristics of lawyers that hamper their success as leaders. These same characteristics tend to hamper their involvement in government ethics programs. This is a very serious problem, because most of the people who are most important to the establishment and effective functioning of a local government ethics program — elected officials, government attorneys, and ethics commission staff members — are lawyers.