NYTimes: State Department lawyers never advised Hillary to stop using personal email accounts.
She wasn't doing anything in secret, but openly. And no one in the Obama administration objected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/politics/when-hillary-clinton-joined-obama-administration-friction-was-over-staff-not-email.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
By the time she was sworn in as secretary, her closest aides, who came with her to Foggy Bottom, knew that she communicated only through a private email address. The practice was not a secret, according to a person with direct knowledge of the inner workings of State Department under Mrs. Clinton, and no one thought it necessary that she switch to an official government address, which would have caused her email to be preserved under the 2009 rules and regulations from the National Archives and Records Administration. Neither career foreign service officers nor State Department lawyers suggested that Mrs. Clinton use a department email address, the person said.
But Mrs. Clintons use of a clintonemail.com address, which shielded those emails from public records requests, is now giving ammunition to critics eager to diminish her experience as a globe-trotting diplomat, which allies portray as her strongest credential in seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
Moreover, Mrs. Clintons relationship with the Obama White House, which she and her aides worked hard to improve and nurture, once again seems strained. Some of her allies have grumbled that the presidents aides could have done more to support her perhaps, one said, by pointing out that the president himself and Mrs. Clintons successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, both use private accounts in addition to their government email addresses.
SNIP