Big Law Is Yet Another Problem
There are myriad institutional problems in this country that trace to the manifestations of Leviathan in media, tech, pharma, and other industries among which is the legal profession.
BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE
View original article at Brownstone.org.
Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe was once the preeminent legal scholar in the country. The New York Times referred to him as a “legal icon” and “President Obama’s mentor.” New York Magazine called him “the nation’s foremost scholar of constitutional law.”
But in reality, Tribe is the archetype for the supposedly solemn legal practitioner who is merely a stooge for the Democratic Party establishment. The cast of lawyers maintain facades of jurisprudential seriousness, but beneath their suits there is a Bolshevik thirst for power.
Tribe began his work in this field nearly four decades ago when he testified against the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, calling Bork “hostile to individual rights and deferential to executive power.”
With time, however, Tribe’s dedication to unravelling the social fabric and destroying his political enemies became more apparent. He sought to upend property rights during the Covid response by supporting a CDC eviction moratorium. He later lobbied President Biden to unilaterally cancel student loans, though he never acknowledged if that would be considered “hostile to individual rights” or “deferential to executive power.” He later defended the Biden regime’s censorship of online dissent, writing that the proliferation of ideas would “make us less secure as a nation” and “endanger us all every day.”
Most recently, Professor Tribe joined a slew of the nation’s largest law firms in arguing that it is unconstitutional for public schools to divide their sports teams by sex. Behemoth law firms like Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP ($2.7 billion in annual revenue) and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP ($1.6 billion in annual revenue) filed amicus briefs opposing West Virginia’s law limiting female sports to biological women.
Kathleen Hartnett, a partner at Cooley LLP ($2.1 billion in annual revenue), argued on behalf of the challenge to the law. Despite billing approximately $3,000 per hourto paying clients, she was unable to provide a definition of what it means “to be a man or woman, a boy or girl” when asked by Justice Samuel Alito.
This occurrence is no anomaly; Big Law fundamentally distorts the American legal system by offering billions of dollars in free legal services to unconstitutional crusades and liberal pet projects while denying access to any opposition group.
For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (annual revenue $3.6 billion) dedicated approximately 40,000 pro bono hours to immigration cases in 2022 alone (accounting for at least $5 million in legal work) and has continued to oppose any form of deportations of illegal aliens. The firm dedicates millions in resources to advancing other left-wing causes, including affirmative action, the trans agenda, and a “fellowship” program that states its desire to expand access to food stamps, combat election integrity efforts, and support “sanctuary city laws.”
Big Law generally is much the same. Willkie Farr & Gallagher (annual revenue $1.5 billion) touts on its website that it served pro bono to support continued “surgical abortions” in Tennessee. In 2020, Law360 described how firms like Ropes & Gray (annual revenue $3.4 billion), Arnold & Porter (annual revenue $1.19 billion), and WilmerHale “jumped into court fights” to support mail-in voting gratis.
Notably, these gratuitous in-kind donations only extend in one direction. None of these firms offered defense services to January 6 protestors locked away in solitary confinement or to Christians targeted by Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. Skadden did not offer counsel to dissidents debanked for resisting the regime. WilmerHale never stood in pro bono to stop states from shuttering churches or businesses through lockdowns. Cooley will never argue a case before the Supreme Court on behalf of the vaccine-injured.
To the contrary, they work to destroy anyone who resists their manipulation of the scales of justice. Through a political group called Project 65, Democratic attorneys like Mark Elias (formerly of Perkins Cole, annual revenue $1.2 billion) work to disbar any lawyers who oppose mail-in voting.
Elias has demanded an “accountability structure” for those who challenge the Democrats’ mandated standards for a “free and fair election.” “I don’t think any lawyer should have a bar license for the privilege of destroying our country’s democratic traditions,” he insists. Those efforts led to California disbarring President Trump’s former attorney, John Eastman.
If partners refuse to toe the line, the firms dispose of them. Kirkland & Ellis (annual revenue $8.8 billion) forced out partner Paul Clement for successfully defending Second Amendment rights at the Supreme Court. Todd Blanche, a longtime partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft (annual revenue $638 million) had to resign to represent President Trump in 2023, a notable departure from Big Law proudly offering counsel to Democrats like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and Anita Hill during their public controversies. After successfully arguing Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Adam Mortara had to resign from his partner role at Bartlit Beck.
In 2022, Hogan Lovells (annual revenue $3.0 billion) fired a female partner, Robin Keller, for voicing her support for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in an internal company call. Keller wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “If this could happen to me, anyone who expresses a disfavored opinion—even on a matter of law—can expect the same treatment: immediate cancellation without concern for client interests, due process or fairness.”
Over 40,000 students enroll in American law schools every year, and the averagegraduate is saddled with $125,000 in student loans. The only practical way to pay off that debt is through indentured servitude at the country’s largest law firms, and the behemoths ensure that there is no “free market” of ideas to challenge their orthodoxy. Not only do new associates face the wrath of the “immediate cancellation” that Keller describes, but usury further enslaves them into obedience.
This process further distorts the legal system, which is President Trump’s main obstacle to implementing the reform that he was elected to enact. By cloaking themselves in legalese and sophistry, radicals seize outsized influence in the American organs of power and position themselves for favorable judicial appointments. They block the Trump administration with absurd injunctions; they wield outsized influence in the universities and in the news media; they lend supposed authority to ideas as preposterous as the idea that schools cannot legally have girls and boys teams for sports.
There are myriad institutional problems in this country that trace to the many manifestations of Leviathan in media, tech, pharma, and other industries among which is the legal profession itself. They have in common an intractable desire to preserve the administrative status quo while fighting against a rebirth of freedom on the 250th anniversary of this nation’s founding. Even as their influence is shrinking due to public exposure, their tenacity and determination to hold on to their power is more palpable than ever before.
It is true that Big Law is yet another problem. However, if the reformists do not have enough power, it is better to shrink the front and focus attention and power on one or two problems at a time. If you are forced to solve all problems one by one, which one would you try to solve first? Of course, few social problems can be completely or permanently solved, but usually they can be put "under control" when decisive actions are taken. The speed of turning around will be slow, but there is at least some chance of partial success.