Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Allocating Influence, Heidi R. Anderson

Heidi R Anderson

As more lawmaking is achieved at the administrative agency level, the issue of whether and how to apply the rules of legal ethics to lawyers that lobby agency decision makers grows more important; however, at this time, the ethics of influencing is a murky area in need of clarification. Any attempt to clarify the ethics of influencing should start with a core principle underlying modern legal ethics — the avoidance and/or resolution of conflicts of interest. Accordingly, this Article addresses a conflict of interest — the “allocating influence conflict”— that, to date, has escaped proper identification or analysis. In its …