Working for the Department of Justice used to be a safe bet. You’d get great experience serving the country. Veteran prosecutors would train and closely supervise newer prosecutors to bring (mostly) meritorious cases. Prosecutors were expected to follow the ethics rules and (almost) always did. As a result, a resume enhanced by listing a few years at DOJ would help launch you into lucrative private practice.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those days are long over.
Here in DC, I have heard first and second hand about how terrible it is in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and in Main Justice. Morale is down and experienced prosecutors are leaving in droves. It is so bad that DOJ is hiring AUSAs directly out of law school.
Far worse than a miserable work environment, though, is that DOJ lawyers seem to be taking personal risks by staying at DOJ. DOJ leadership, coupled with unheard-of direct White House influence, appears to be causing, encouraging, or outright coercing conduct that toes the ethical line. We’ve seen some federal prosecutors resign from their jobs publicly, citing DOJ leadership’s efforts to encourage violations of ethics rules. This kind of letter offers insight into what is happening behind the scenes.
DOJ leadership recognizes the ethical risks here. But the response is not to increase ethics training but instead to try to free its lawyers from independent ethics scrutiny. Currently, the McDade Amendment (28 U.S.C. § 530B) requires government attorneys to comply with state ethics rules to the same extent as any other attorney practicing in that state. But Attorney General Pam Bondi has proposed a rule that would allow DOJ to take control of state bar ethics investigations into its own lawyers— requiring state bars to suspend their probes while DOJ conducts its own internal review, with no deadline for completing it and preempting state findings entirely.
Let’s look at what some recent news stories reveal about the ethics risks for current DOJ lawyers.
Misrepresentations to the Court (Rule 3.3)
It’s Ethics 101 that lawyers owe a duty of candor to a court. ABA Model Rule 3.3(a) provides that a lawyer may not knowingly “make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer.”
DOJ lawyers seem to be struggling with this rule. Some of the problem seems to be that their clients—the White House or various federal agencies—do not want the DOJ lawyers to be truthful with courts.
Let’s start with what happened this week in the Southern District of New York. In a stunning letter filed March 24, 2026, DOJ attorneys disclose that they made a “material mistaken statement of fact” that was at the heart of the government’s defense in African Communities Together v. Lyons— a civil case challenging ICE arrests at immigration courthouses. DOJ lawyers had previously argued that a 2025 ICE guidance memo justified arrests at immigration courts. But in its March 24 letter, the DOJ lawyers informed the court that this position was incorrect because the guidance memo “does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions” near immigration courts. The DOJ lawyers laid the blame squarely on counsel for ICE, saying “[b]ased on our discussions with ICE today, this regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error.”
The DOJ lawyers also admitted that they did not personally review the memo before representing its contents to the court. In fact, the letter states that the DOJ lawyers had received a copy of the memo for the first time that morning. While these DOJ lawyers did the right thing by correcting the misstatement, it’s hard to understand how they did not reviewed the memo in the first place. I have no inside baseball here, but it’s very possible that ICE’s strategy was to keep the DOJ lawyers from seeing the memo; if they saw the memo, they could not misrepresent the scope of the guidance to the court and the defense would fall apart.
What DOJ Lawyers Must Do If Their Client Tells Them to Lie (Rule 1.16)
When it comes to resisting a client’s demands, DOJ lawyers these days are in a different place than lawyers in private practice of course. Their “clients” are the agencies, agency leadership all the way up to Cabinet leadership, and the White House.
A lawyer in private practice with a client who wants the lawyer to do something unethical can withdraw from the representation. That might result in a financial loss but does not mean the lawyer will lose her job. In contrast, it appears that if DOJ lawyers do not do what their client wants them to do, then they could lose their job. For example, the DOJ lawyer in the Kilmar Albrego Garcia case was summarily terminated after admitting in court that the government had made a mistake in deporting him.
If a federal agency wants a DOJ lawyer to make false statements or offer false evidence in court, the comments to Rule 3.3 provide the roadmap for next steps. First, the lawyer must try to persuade the client not to offer the evidence. If that persuasion fails and the DOJ lawyer continues the representation, she must refuse to offer the false evidence.
The lawyer can seek to withdraw in an extreme situation. The comments to Rule 3.3 recognize that there are times when “withdrawal from the representation is not permitted or will not undo the effect of the false evidence.” In that circumstance, “the advocate must make such disclosure to the tribunal as is reasonably necessary to remedy the situation, even if doing so requires the lawyer to reveal information that otherwise would be protected by Rule 1.6 [confidentiality].”
ABA Model Rule 1.16(a)(1), mandates withdrawal when continued representation “will result in violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct or other law.” Of course, DOJ cannot just withdraw from a representation the way a private law firm can. No one else can represent the federal government in court. But an individual DOJ lawyer may need to resort to Rule 1.16 to withdraw from a case personally.
What If an Agency Is Defying a Court Order (Rule 3.3(b))
Also relevant here is Rule 3.3(b), which provides that a lawyer who knows that “a person intends to engage, is engaging or has engaged in criminal or fraudulent conduct related to the proceeding shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal.” So, if a DOJ lawyer knows that the agency is defying a court order behind the scenes, then the lawyer may need to tell the court.
The comments to Rule 3.3 establish have a high standard for “knowledge” that offers an escape hatch.
[8] The prohibition against offering false evidence only applies if the lawyer knows that the evidence is false. A lawyer’s reasonable belief that evidence is false does not preclude its presentation to the trier of fact. A lawyer’s knowledge that evidence is false, however, can be inferred from the circumstances. See Rule 1.0(f). Thus, although a lawyer should resolve doubts about the veracity of testimony or other evidence in favor of the client, the lawyer cannot ignore an obvious falsehood.
[9] Although paragraph (a)(3) only prohibits a lawyer from offering evidence the lawyer knows to be false, it permits the lawyer to refuse to offer testimony or other proof that the lawyer reasonably believes is false. Offering such proof may reflect adversely on the lawyer’s ability to discriminate in the quality of evidence and thus impair the lawyer’s effectiveness as an advocate…
Applying this rule to the SDNY situation, you can see how the DOJ lawyers did not “know” the guidance memo was inapplicable because, if their letter is to be credited, they never saw the memo before describing the guidance to the court. We don’t know if there were other red flags in the DOJ lawyers’ communications with ICE counsel that would reach the standard of making their position an “obvious falsehood.”
Competence and Diligence Obligations (Rule 1.1 and Rule 1.3)
ABA Model Rule 1.1 requires competent representation: “A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”
It was big news in February when a government lawyer detailed to a U.S. Attorney’s Office to handle immigration-related habeas cases told a federal judge, “This job sucks.” She complained that she had not been properly trained to handle the cases and could not handle the workload. When her in-court breakdown hit the news, DOJ fired her. New jobs are difficult, and I doubt anyone is filing a bar complaint against this lawyer for lacking competence. But it’s yet another way DOJ seems to be putting lawyers into ethically questionable spots.
Then there’s Rule 1.3, which mandates an attorney’s “diligence.” The comment to Rule 1.3 notes that “A lawyer’s work load must be controlled so that each matter can be handled competently.” That problem would also apply to the “this job sucks” lawyer.
I have seen a workload problem for DOJ lawyers on a small scale: an increase in requests for extension of time by DOJ lawyers who claim they have a large workload. An AUSA in North Carolina recently was caught submitting a brief that contained fabricated quotations and misstatement of cases. The court ordered senior USAO leadership to appear at a show cause hearing to determine possible sanctions.
If DOJ lawyers are so overworked that they are leaning on unverified AI output, then this may violate Rule 1.3. If the workload does not permit competent handling of each matter, the ethical answer is not to cut corners with AI but instead to seek an extension of time.
The Job Search Issue
It’s also worth considering the reputational harm that may come from staying at DOJ. Judges publicly question DOJ lawyers’ credibility in a way that has never happened before. (I wrote a few months ago about how the loss of DOJ’s “presumption of credibility” is a stunning reversal.)
Private law firms, at least those in more progressive cities, may hesitate to hire someone who defended controversial matters while at DOJ. Of course, DOJ has plenty of work that is not controversial at all (drug trafficking, firearms offenses, child pornography). It does seem that leadership has no qualms about moving people between sections to put out the next fire.
Beyond that, DOJ lawyers take the risk that their names will be connected to the kinds of embarrassing ethical situations that I’ve described. The internet’s memory is long. I haven’t mentioned the names of the lawyers in this post but you can find them quickly in the links. A lawyer looking for a job can expect a prospective employer to run a quick google search. Clients will do the same. No law firm wants to hire a lawyer who appears to have questionable ethics.
I am fully cognizant that there are many lawyers still at DOJ who are trying to keep their heads down, do excellent work, stay far away from ethical violations, and waiting for the next administration to turn things around. In a way, I applaud them for trying to do the right thing–that is true public service. Plus, leaving DOJ causes genuine hardship through loss of salary and benefits. It would be far too facile to suggest that everyone should walk out of DOJ right now and that may ultimately do more harm than good.
What I’m saying is that staying at DOJ means accepting increasing risks and decreasing rewards.