Study Finds That the Top 140 U.S. Law Firms Overwhelmingly Donate to Democrats
We were wondering why so many lawyers, district attorneys and judges were willing to go after President-Elect Donald J. Trump, Christians, MAGA patriots, and those who speak truth to power.
We may have found the answer.
Professor of Law at the Notre Dame Law School Derek T. Muller wrote on his blog an article titled “Ranking the most liberal and conservative law firms among the top 140, 2021 edition.”
Professor Muller wrote the following:
One of my most popular posts remains “Ranking the most liberal and conservative law firms.” That post is from 2013, and an update is long overdue.
At the outset, “ranking” a firm or calling it “conservative” or “liberal” is imperfect, I know, but I picked a title eight years ago and I’m sticking with it…. Better to call it, “which law firms contribute the most to Democrats or Republicans.” But I am updating the methodology, and I look forward to doing some even more interesting things with the data in the short term.
First, I looked at 140 law firms. I broke them out into two groups. The first are the AmLaw 100. The second are a group of 40 firms that fit the NLJ500 or Legal 500 plaintiffs’ firms. (Two firms appear in both lists, Paul Weiss and Quinn Emanuel.)
Second, unlike my 2013 ranking (where I looked at contributions to Barack Obama’s or Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns), I expanded the window. This time, I focused on contributions to the Joe Biden campaign (including “victory fund) and the Donald Trump campaign (including “victory fund” and “Make America Great Again Committee”); the major party organizations (DCCC, DSCC, DNC, NRCC, NRSC, and RNC); and two major aggregators of campaign contributions, ActBlue (Democratic) and WinRed (Republican). There’s a little asymmetry here—Trump had four years of campaigning to Biden’s shorter window, ActBlue is more established than WinRed, etc.—but I think it evens out. These accounted for about 1/3 of all campaign contributions. (Future research will look at more.) I looked at the 2017-2020 period, a four-year window.
Third, I did not look at just attorney contributions, but I looked at any contributions from those employed by these firms. (See update below.) There are often different titles for attorneys (partner, counsel, summer associate, etc.) that are self-reported and are tougher to capture. And I thought it would be useful to include all contributions, even from consultants, paralegals, administrative assistants, and others employed by the firm for a broader portrait of the firm. Again, a judgment call here. I also looked for common misspellings, abbreviations, or alternative names for the firm (e.g., separating out the two Steptoe & Johnsons, etc.) to capture the most contributions.
So, that said, I’m sure there are errors in the data, but it’s a fairly good snapshot.
All told, I captured about $61 million in contributions to Democratic-affiliated groups compared to about $11 million for Republican-affiliated groups in 2017-2020, nearly a 6-to-1 ratio. (See update below.)
Below is a visualization of the AmLaw100 law firms. (By “percentage of contributions,” I mean by dollar figures, not individual instances.)
Many firms had fewer than 10% of contributions go to major Republican outlets. A handful had at least 25%, and just three crossed 50%. Even among those the figures are deceptive. At White & Case, for instance, there was a single $500,000 contribution to the Trump Victory Fund, more than half of all Republican contributions in this four-year time period.
The 40 plaintiffs’ firms results are below (asterisks denote the second listing):
The Bottom Line
Citizens for Ethics in June 4, 2024 article titled Trump’s 88 criminal charges and where they stand by Brie Sparkman and Sara Wiatrak reported:
As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases. This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted.
All of these charges and cases are null and void. However!
Currently there are over 1,2oo American citizens in prison due to the J6 Committee’s findings.
President Trump has created the Department of Government Efficiency to address the failures of our justice system to implement the rule of law.
The American people gave President-Elect Donald J. Trump a mandate to drain-the-swamp. This mandate begins with the office of the U.S. Attorney General and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
We the people have had enough of lawlessness, lawfare and abuse of our Constitutional rights!
©2024 Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.) All rights reserved.
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Totally agree with findings of this study and not surprised. Our colleges and universities including most law schools have gone totally woke meaning they teach law from the perspective of leftist/Marist values. Social Justice has replaced real Justice. Just look at the actions of the current Dept of IN-JUSTICE under corrupt AG Merritt Garland. Law schools should use case studies of how not to administer justice and how to administer “Lawfare” under this Obama 3/Biden/Haris DOJ.