The U.S. Department of Justice faces new pressure to make lawyer-misconduct investigations more transparent and less subject to potential conflicts of interest.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have backed legislation that would shift oversight of misconduct investigations away from the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which is under the attorney general, to the independent Office of the Inspector General. Similar proposals have been kicked around Main Justice and Capitol Hill for decades but failed to advance. The push was given new life following the publication last month of a study that highlighted the secrecy of prosecutorial misconduct inquiries — even in instances when OPR concluded that an attorney violated rules.
