Do's and Don'ts for New Trainers (and Not-So-New)
An experienced panel explains the most important things ethics trainers must accomplish, as well as common pitfalls to be avoided. The emphasis is on intensely practical pointers, lessons learned in the trenches, rather than educational theorizing. A slide show illustrates concrete examples, and handouts include useful take-away checklists and a detailed bibliography of ethics training modules available online and elsewhere that trainers can modify for the needs of their agencies. The primary audience for this session is relatively new ethics trainers, but those with moderate to advanced experience should obtain at least some benefit.
Jerry Lawson is a lawyer with the Office of Inspector General, U.S. Agency for International Development. Since entering the Federal government in 1979, he has worked as a lawyer for the Small Business Administration, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Department of Treasury and the U.S. Army. He graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he served as Lead Articles Editor of the law review and he later clerked for a U.S. District Court judge.
The author of The Complete Internet Handbook for Lawyers (ABA 1999), one of the ABA’s more successful technology books, Mr. Lawson has also published over 80 magazine articles, mostly on effective lawyer use of technology.
He was a presenter on the topic of IG/ethics officer coordination at the 2005 and 2007 Office of Government Ethics conferences.
At the 2007 OGE conference Mr. Lawson also gave a presentation on the topic "How to Teach Ethics." His segment focused on the use of computer slide show software such as Microsoft PowerPoint. He gave similar presentations in 2007 for the Interagency Ethics Council (“Stop Death by PowerPoint”) and the OGE Ethics Training Symposium:
Time to Get Creative conference (“Presentations for the Television Generation”).
He created the Interagency Ethics Council web site, the IEC Journal, http://www.iecjournal.org, in 1994, and has served as moderator since then. This project was profiled in the Winter 2005 issue of the ABA publication The Public Lawyer. Since January 2011, he has written the "Training Tips" column for the IEC Journal.
An experienced presenter, Mr. Lawson has spoken before legal groups, including the American Bar Association, Department of Justice, ALI-ABA, Legal Tech New York, American Association of Law Libraries, President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency (PCIE), Association of Directors of Investigation, Association of Inspectors General, Federal Dispute Resolution Conference, and many other groups. He moderated a national symposium on e-mail security for lawyers in 2000.
Mr. Lawson’s high performance has earned him many awards from his peers, including:
* President’s Counsel on Integrity and Efficiency, 2001, 2003 and 2007.
* Council of Counsels to the Inspectors General, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2007 (many more than any other member of the organization during this period).
His cover story in the March, 2000 issue of Trial Magazine, the flagship publication of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, received an award for “How-To Feature Article.”
Harrison Ford is an Associate Counsel to the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of State. His previous assignments at the State Department include Foreign Service tours as a Consular Officer and as a Science and Technology Reporting Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and as a General Services Officer in the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. His practice at State OIG focuses on Federal contracts and contract administration, crimes and criminal procedure, and ethics law. His duties also include conducting in-house training for OIG employees in a number of fields, including ethics and conflicts of interest.
Prior to Joining State, Ford worked at the Commerce Department as both an ethics attorney in the Office of General Counsel and an international trade specialist in the US & Foreign Commercial Service.
Ford practiced in the Criminal Division of the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office and served as a city prosecutor in Gulfport, Mississippi. He is a graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi and the University of Mississippi School Of Law. He has been the recipient of both the Meritorious and Superior Honor Awards at the State Department.