General Attorney Job Description

A General Attorney is a government lawyer whose client is the institution itself: a federal agency, a state department, a county or a city. The federal government uses the title for its GS-0905 attorney series, and the same work happens in state attorney general divisions, county counsel offices and city law departments under local titles. The defining feature is breadth. One attorney can spend Monday on a contract dispute, Tuesday on an employee removal, Wednesday on a records request and Thursday on a draft regulation.

Advice comes first. The core of the job is answering the question an official brings before acting: does the statute let us do this, what procedure has to come first, and what happens if we are sued? The answer goes out as a memo or a formal opinion, written so a program director with no legal training can follow it. A good General Attorney gives the answer the law supports, including "no," and offers a lawful route to the goal when one exists.

Litigation and hearings. Government offices are sued over permits, benefits, contracts, employment decisions and constitutional claims. The General Attorney may handle a personnel appeal or an administrative hearing alone, and federal agency attorneys may work with Justice Department lawyers on cases in federal court. State and local attorneys may try cases directly or manage outside counsel. Either way, the work involves building the administrative record, answering discovery and writing the briefs.

Rules, legislation and documents. Regulatory agencies run notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and their attorneys draft preambles, answer public comments and check that the final rule matches the authority Congress or the legislature granted. Local government attorneys draft ordinances and resolutions for a council or board. Every office reviews contracts, grants and intergovernmental agreements for legal sufficiency before someone signs.

Transparency and ethics. Government records are subject to public records laws. Attorneys review responses to Freedom of Information Act and state open-records requests, decide which exemptions apply and defend those calls on appeal. They advise on open-meetings rules and serve as ethics counselors on gifts, conflicts and outside work. Because their own emails may be requested, careful drafting becomes habit.

The tools. Daily work runs through Westlaw or Lexis, the Federal Register and state administrative codes, a court's electronic filing system, case management software and, where an office has approved them, AI research and drafting tools whose output the attorney checks line by line. There are no billable hours. The calendar is set by court deadlines, comment periods, legislative sessions and budget cycles, and a surge in work does not always bring new hires with it, so triage is part of the craft.

Education and license. The job requires a Juris Doctor and active bar membership in good standing in at least one U.S. state, territory or the District of Columbia; state and local offices may require admission in their own state, or admission within a set period after hire. OPM's March 2026 guidance on Schedule A attorney hiring recommends that federal agencies verify bar status through the official website of the licensing authority. It also notes that OPM does not set governmentwide qualification standards for the GS-0905 series, so each agency decides what experience and skills a given attorney position requires.

Entry points. Federal agencies may treat entry-level attorney jobs, typically classified at GS-11 or an equivalent grade, as requiring no prior legal experience, according to the same OPM guidance. As a rough guide, routes in include a law school clinic or externship with a government office, a judicial clerkship, a stint as an assistant prosecutor or public defender, or a few years in a firm practice that touches regulated industries, government contracts or employment law. Lateral hires into senior advisory roles typically bring 5 to 10 years of practice, though offices set their own thresholds.

How federal agencies test candidates. Because attorney jobs are filled in the excepted service, they are not subject to competitive examining procedures. OPM encourages agencies to combine structured, job-related assessments with structured interviews. Its listed options include USA Hire assessments for reasoning and decision making, work samples such as a writing assessment, and accomplishment records. Be ready for a writing exercise or a request for an unedited writing sample, and prepare one that shows statutory analysis rather than advocacy alone.

Knowledge that pays off:

• Administrative law: the Administrative Procedure Act, judicial review of agency action, and your state's administrative procedure act
• Federal or state procurement law, including the Federal Acquisition Regulation for federal work
• Federal employment law and civil service rules, plus collective bargaining frameworks where employees are unionized
• Public records, open-meetings and government ethics statutes for your jurisdiction
• Constitutional issues that recur in government litigation: speech, search and seizure, due process and equal protection

Skills that separate strong candidates:

• Writing short, decisive memos for non-lawyers on deadline
• Reading an authorizing statute closely and spotting where the agency's power ends
• Managing a docket of unrelated matters without losing track of dates
• Staying neutral across leadership changes and giving the same legal answer to every administration

Character and fitness. Bar admission already involves a character and fitness review, and government employers may run their own background checks before an offer becomes final.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook projects 5 percent employment growth for lawyers from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, and about 28,700 openings a year on average over the decade. That projection covers lawyers in every setting. BLS does not project government attorneys separately, so the government picture has to be read from hiring data and personnel policy.

Federal hiring contracted in 2025. NALP's August 2026 report on the Class of 2025 shows the effect of the 2025 federal hiring freeze and workforce reductions on new lawyers. The number of graduates hired by the federal government, excluding judicial clerkships, fell 37.0%, from nearly 1,100 in the Class of 2024 to approximately 690. Federal agency honors program positions dropped from 317 to 50. Government's share of employed new graduates fell from 12.9% to 12.0%. NALP attributes the bulk of the decline to reduced federal hiring.

Federal hiring rules were rewritten. OPM's March 2026 guidance places attorney hiring inside Executive Order 14170 and the Merit Hiring Plan. Attorney positions stay in Schedule A of the excepted service under 5 CFR 213.3102(d), outside competitive examining, but OPM says agencies remain responsible for fair and open competition and structured job-related assessments, and must apply veterans' preference as far as administratively feasible. OPM also encourages agencies to cut time-to-hire and to consider whether some GS-13 or GS-14 attorney positions can be filled at lower grades to build early-career pipelines. For applicants, that means preparing for structured assessments and interviews, not only a resume screen.

Where the jobs are. OEWS counted 160,180 lawyers in federal, state and local government in May 2025: 40,220 in the federal executive branch and 52,910 in state government outside schools and hospitals. State attorney general offices, state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, transit authorities, public universities and utility districts all employ in-house counsel, and each posts its own openings.

Career paths. Inside government, the ladder runs from staff attorney to senior or supervisory attorney, deputy general counsel and general counsel or chief counsel, the last sometimes a political or board-appointed post. Some attorneys move into administrative law judge or hearing officer roles, legislative counsel jobs, or agency leadership. Others move to firms, trade associations and regulated companies, where knowing how an agency builds a record and makes a decision is directly useful. Government ethics laws can limit contacts with a former agency after you leave, so read them before negotiating an offer.

What to expect day to day in a tighter market. With fewer federal entry slots in 2025, applicants can strengthen a file with a clinic, externship or summer position in a government office and a clean writing sample on a statutory question. Applicants who are open to state and local offices, and to agencies outside Washington, widen their options.

Dear Hiring Committee,

Please consider me for the General Attorney opening in your Office of General Counsel. I am an assistant city attorney for the City of Lakeview, admitted in Ohio, and for the past four years I have been the lawyer our public works, parks and personnel departments call first.

My work splits between advice and litigation. On the advice side, I review every construction contract and professional services agreement above our council approval threshold, draft the ordinances that go with them, and write the opinion memos department heads rely on when a request falls outside the usual procedure. Last year I rewrote our standard construction contract after a delay claim exposed a gap in the change order clause, and the new form has been used on every project since.

On the litigation side, I defend the city in civil service appeals and state court employment cases. I took two termination appeals through full evidentiary hearings before the civil service commission and won both, and I handled a disability accommodation suit from the answer through a summary judgment ruling in the city's favor. I also manage our public records appeals and have defended our withholding decisions twice before the state court of claims.

What draws me to your office is the regulatory side of the work. Notice-and-comment rulemaking, interagency review and defending a final rule on its administrative record are the parts of public law I have studied closely but practiced least, and your attorneys do them every week. I bring the habits that work requires: careful reading of the authorizing statute, plain memos for non-lawyers, and a docket I never let slip.

I have attached an unedited writing sample, a memo on the city's authority to impose impact fees, and I would welcome the chance to discuss the position.

Sincerely,

Jordan Avery