#108: Donald Sherman - Government Ethics & Oversight Lawyer

How I Lawyer Podcast with Jonah Perlin

In today’s episode I speak with Donald Sherman who is a government ethics and oversight lawyer who is currently the Senior Vice President & Chief Counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, CREW (where, full disclosure, he works with my wife). In addition to his non-profit litigation experience at CREW, Donald has worked in all three branches of government. He served for a number of years as Senior Counsel to Ranking Member Senator Claire McCaskill on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Before that he was Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel for Oversight and Investigations in the Office of General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). And before that he worked for Rep. Elijah Cummings, then-Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform including as Chief Oversight Counsel. He started his legal career as a law clerk Honorable Neil E. Kravitz of the District of Columbia Superior Court and worked in private practice at Crowell & Morning. Donald is a proud graduate of both Georgetown University and Georgetown Law (Go Hoyas).

In our conversation we discuss his decision to become a lawyer in elementary school, how crashing a wedding helped him get his first job in government oversight, the nuts and bolts of being an oversight and ethics lawyer on Capitol Hill and in the non-profit space, how the Hill and advocacy organizations interact when it comes to government oversight work, developing the skills of factual development and investigations, what constitutes success when advocating for major political change, the ways to transition from the private to the public sector, the superpower of being an effective generalist, and the role that people/kindness/relationships play in the life and career of a lawyer.

This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by LawPods, a professional podcast production company for busy attorneys.

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