Law professor John Greil writes:
For years, some of America’s biggest law firms have been unwilling to represent conservative clients whose beliefs run against the elite liberal consensus. This imbalance hurts reputations—and compromises the rule of law.
Big law firms have repeatedly tossed aside superstar attorneys when they represent conservatives. Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, one of his generation’s top Supreme Court litigators, resigned from King & Spalding in 2011 after the firm refused to allow him to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. In 2022 he was forced out of Kirkland & Ellis for declining to comply with the firm’s order to abandon all clients whose cases related to the Second Amendment. (Mr. Clement represents WilmerHale in a lawsuit challenging a Trump order.) Todd Blanche, now a high-ranking Justice Department official, had to leave Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft to represent Mr. Trump in his 2024 Manhattan criminal trial.
Law professor Derek Muller has found that in the five most politically controversial Supreme Court cases between 2018 and 2022, elite firms filed 93 friend-of-the-court briefs in favor of the liberal position and only five supporting the conservative one.
The current term is no different. This month the Supreme Court heard arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case in which parents are claiming the right to opt their children out of sexually charged elementary school lessons. Nine members of the Am Law 100—a ranking of the largest 100 law firms in the country—filed briefs backing the school. None supported the parents.
