In law practice, ethical questions can be blurry; the rules governing them should not be. Yet since its 2000 decision in United States v. Talao, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has obliged defense attorneys and prosecutors to guess at the exact parameters of the "no contact rule"—an ethical canon that applies to nearly every major covert criminal investigation, particularly those overseen by federal prosecutors. It is time that the Ninth Circuit resolve the ambiguity with a bright-line test.
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Originally published by The Recorder, December 2016
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