Legal Seminar, Chicago, IL

Hypothetical H

A new Commissioner is appointed to your agency, which regulates real estate brokers. She tells you that she has worked for 30 years in the real estate industry and has never seen the Department take any enforcement action that was merited. She wants you to tell everyone in the enforcement division to stop working on real estate investigations and to send a memo to her on cases already filed with reasons the case should not be dismissed. And “they better be good reasons, not government gobbletygook about this petty rule or that silly rule.” What must (or should) you do? After this encounter (and its aftermath), you decamp for a job at a nonprofit. You decide to write an article for the state Bar journal decrying the lack of enforcement at the Department. Can you write the article? Can you quote what was said to you?

Source Acknowledgements

• Gallup.com (slides 2-3) • Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism (slides 10-13) • Law in Practice (West Academic Publishing) (slide 8) • Leslie A.T. Haley, Park Haley LLP, Everyday Ethical Dilemmas Faced by Government Attorneys (November 2016)