The General Attorney Series, series code 0905, covers professional legal jobs in federal agencies. The work can include building cases and taking them to trial before a court, an administrative body, or officials with quasi-judicial power. Attorneys also answer legal questions raised by an agency's regulations, practices, and other business, which can include investigating to gather evidence.
An attorney may draft orders, rules, and regulations that put a statute's requirements into effect, write or negotiate contracts and other papers an agency needs, check documents others have drafted, comment formally on proposed legislation or recommend changes to it, and prepare decisions for agency officials to consider and adopt. The work can also include editing laws passed by Congress, or the opinions of courts, commissions, and boards, for publication.
Some jobs in the series sit outside the Administrative Procedure Act and involve hearing cases that arise under an agency's contracts or under agency rules that carry the force of law, then deciding them or recommending how they should be settled. All work in the series requires admission to the bar.