Core Prohibition of Rule 7.6

Core Prohibition of Rule 7.6

Rule 7.6 restricts acceptance, not giving. A lawyer or law firm may not accept a government legal engagement or an appointment by a judge if the lawyer or firm makes a political contribution, or solicits political contributions, for the purpose of obtaining or being considered for that type of engagement or appointment.¹ The sentence names one forbidden act, accepting the work, and one condition that turns acceptance into a violation: a contribution or solicitation made for that purpose.

The rule leaves the contribution itself alone. Comment [1] affirms that lawyers may participate fully in the political process, including by making and soliciting contributions to candidates for judicial and other public office, so reading Rule 7.6 as a ban on campaign giving gets the rule backward.² The rule targets a narrower danger. When lawyers give or solicit in order to win government work or a judicial appointment, the public may legitimately question whether the lawyers who get the work were chosen for competence and merit, and the integrity of the profession suffers.³

Purpose is therefore the whole inquiry. Comment [5] frames it as a but-for question: contributions serve the forbidden purpose if, but for the desire to be considered for the engagement or appointment, the lawyer or firm would not have made or solicited them, and the purpose may be determined by examining the circumstances.⁴ The but-for test gets its own section below. For now, notice its direction. It asks why the lawyer gave when the check was written. Who won the election, and what work followed, may bear on that question as part of the circumstances, but neither appears in the rule's condition.

An exam fact pattern in which a donor later wins government work tempts you to infer a forbidden purpose from the sequence. Resist. Work that follows a contribution is evidence to weigh, not the rule's condition, so look for facts that show why the lawyer gave: a donor who learned that the official controls the assignments and wrote the check for that reason, or a lawyer who tells friends the money is meant to get the firm considered.

The rule covers two acts, and either one can trigger it. A lawyer or firm that makes a contribution is covered, and so is one that solicits contributions from others, so raising money from friends and associates counts just as writing a check does.⁵ Do not confuse this solicitation with the one in Rule 7.3(a), which, with limited exceptions, bars in-person, live telephone, and real-time electronic solicitation of professional employment when a significant motive is the lawyer's pecuniary gain.⁶ Rule 7.3(a) concerns contact with prospective clients; Rule 7.6 concerns contributions made or raised for the purpose of winning government work.

The rule's text states its condition entirely in terms of what the lawyer or firm does and why. It does not make the knowledge of the candidate or judge part of that condition.⁷

In both scenes the same question decides the result, and the rule's consequence is the same: a lawyer or firm whose contribution or solicitation had the forbidden purpose may not accept work of the type sought.

Step 3 does the real work. Students often stall at step 1 by asking whether the contribution was proper, yet the contribution, standing alone, is the one part of the problem this rule does not forbid.