Last night I gave a three hour Constituting Legal Education seminar to about 60 lawyers employed by the federal government in Washington, D.C. The topic was government lawyer ethics, which is different, and far more complicated, than regular legal ethics. This is  my favorite group. The government lawyers are always the most ethically astute, engaged, and contentious of my seminar participants.

One of the issues discussed  involved the conduct of much-maligned White House aide Kellyanne Conway, and the ethics complaint filed against her earlier this year with the D.C. Bar by a group of legal ethicists, as discussed in the February Ethics Alarms post on the topic, “The Unethical, Depressing, Bar Complaint Against Kellyanne Conway.”

After briefly describing the substance of the complaint and as a prelude to discussion, I asked the group if the legal ethicists’ complaint was justifiable and fair. Their options were..

1. No.

2. Yes..

3. No, but I hate her and I’m glad they did it

4. I’m not sure.

The anonymous results were that nearly 80% of the lawyers agreed that the charges were unfair and political rather than based on sound legal ethics analysis. Almost half of these, however, chose answer #3.

I expected a few votes for that answer, but primarily put it in for the anticipated laugh, which I got.