Legal ethics and professionalism played almost no role in any lawyer’s mind, including mine. Watergate changed that—for me and every other lawyer.”. After Watergate, schools began to make legal ethics a required class. Bar examinations added an extra section on ethics.
THE EARLIEST BREAK-IN. Watergate actually was the culmination of a chain of events that began months before the failed break-in at the Democratic Party offices. In March 1971, presidential assistant Charles Colson helped create a $250,000 fund for “intelligence gathering” of Democratic Party leaders.
In 1977, the ABA created the Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards, whose work led to the adoption of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct by the association’s policymaking House of Delegates in August 1983 .
Today, Krogh and Dean travel around the country speaking to bar associations, law firms and law schools about legal ethics. Each has been booked for about 20 programs in 2012.
Heading up the Plumbers was Egil “Bud” Krogh Jr. , a deputy assistant to the president. Among his recruits were G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who organized the Watergate break-in while working for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, aka CREEP.
By the summer of 1971, John Ehrlichman had authorized the creation of a special investigations unit, known simply as the Plumbers.