When Government Attacks Lawyers: The Role of an Independent Bar

This ethics program looks at the 2025 Executive Orders against lawyers and law firms, and assesses the ethics rules implicated. From the duty of loyalty, to conflicts of interests, to questions of waivable conflicts, to the role of zealous advocacy, and the ethics underpinnings for representing the unpopular, this program lets you explore the key ethics rules and see how they coalesce to form an ethics grounding for the idea of an independent bar. Is it under assault? Tracing history from John Adams representing the British soldiers for killing colonialists to Cold War lawyer Telford Taylor defending communists, this ethics program puts into context the ethics rules that are implicated in our current environment.