Other Law Still Applies

Other Law Still Applies

Rule 1.11(c) opens by pointing outside itself: "Except as law may otherwise expressly permit."¹ The clause signals that the Rule is one layer of regulation among several. Rule 1.11 sets conflict standards for former government officers and employees as a matter of lawyer ethics, and professional discipline enforces them. It does not supersede government ethics statutes, which are often enforced by criminal penalties and may place similar or additional restraints on a former government employee.² A lawyer who leaves public service carries both sets of limits into private practice, and satisfying one leaves the other in full force.

The federal statute governing conflicts for persons who have left federal service shows how the layers can diverge. Its language overlaps with Rule 1.11 but is stricter, and two of its limits matter here. First, it permanently bars a former federal employee from representation in a particular matter involving specific parties, in which the United States has a direct and substantial interest and in which the employee participated "personally and substantially."³ Second, it restricts representation for two years in matters within the broader scope of the employee's "official responsibility as such officer or employee."⁴ The duration tracks the employee's connection to the matter: a lifetime bar for work the employee did personally and substantially, and two years for matters that merely fell within the employee's wider duties.

The permanent bar also turns on a different fact than paragraph (c) does. The statute asks what the employee did in the matter. Paragraph (c) asks what the lawyer knows, namely confidential government information that could be used to a person's material disadvantage.⁵ The statute therefore does not restate paragraph (c). It is a separate limit that may apply when paragraph (c) does not, and it may fail to apply when paragraph (c) does.

Each scene shows one layer operating on its own terms. In the first, the firm's compliance with the Rule left the statute untouched. In the second, the lapse of the statutory period left the Rule untouched. A fact pattern that recites a timely screen and no fee share tells you only that the firm has met the Rule's conditions. One that recites the expiry of a statutory period tells you only that the statute's restriction has ended. When the question is whether the lawyer may proceed, the answer must satisfy both sets of limits.

The opening clause of paragraph (c) works in one direction. Law that expressly permits the representation can lift the Rule's bar, and that is the work the clause does. Law that restricts the lawyer adds a second constraint and never relaxes the first. A statute that is merely silent about the representation permits nothing expressly, so paragraph (c) continues to govern in full.