Let me comment on what’s going on with the prominent law firms, often called BigLaw (a world I come out of but have been unjustly canceled from due to allegations both fake and which profoundly misunderstand how Article II of the Constitution and its adjacent legal privileges work — but that is a somewhat separate topic I can deal with later, though it is related).
We came dangerously close from 2020-2024 to one party achieving a political monopoly and effectively ending the American Republic, leaving us with a veneer of a Constitution, but in reality a non-Constitution or anti-Constitution dreamed up on a case-by-case basis by activists in robes that the Left planned to pack onto the U.S. Supreme Court and onto the lower courts.
The struggles President Trump is having with the courts right now are just part of the aftermath of how close we were to going over the brink.
One of the leverage points that led us to that potential political monopoly is a BigLaw monopoly, in turn abetted by a Top 25 Law School faculty monopoly — and indeed by a collegiate and elementary and secondary school ideologic monopoly.
The law professors are predominantly on the Left and they brainwash entire generations of students to move to the Left or move yet more to the Left than when they entered law school.
Then those students populate BigLaw, make partner, and they run the law firms as functional extensions of the Left as well its main party and its NGOs.
Virtually all pro bono work is then done to benefit the Left, except a case here or there taken on as a token that is designed to let the firm in question claim on paper to be even-handed.
BigLaw PACs also support one side more than the other. And BigLaw partners donate more to one side than the other in their individual capacities too.Internal firm celebrations also skew to the Left. I can remember many of the Left’s causes being celebrated in newfangled days coming literally and figuratively out of left field, but if you thought Constitution Day, for instance, was a big deal and a politically neutral day all Americans should celebrate, you were marked out as odd. As quaint.
There are more conservatives and moderates inside Big Law than Big Law lefties like to think. But the conservatives and moderates have been cowed. And for their part, they have failed to push back against continuous leftward drift, later rapid lurching, and most recently followed by vast acceleration — a stampede — to one side of the political divide. And a large part of this is internal cowardice driven by fear of losing the unholy $ that should end.
This is why we have a Skadden transactional associate over the past week presuming to tell that firm’s leadership what it must do politically to oppose a duly elected President and the political views he carries forward as a representative of the People or she’s going to make noise and quit.Spoiled. Entitled. Captured by Group Think. Can’t hear herself as Middle America would hear her. Clueless.
Thank goodness for Trump, who saw that in just the span of 20 years, BigLaw had become so monolithic and dominated by the Left that he had to take some action to push back on these firms.
Allowing the trend to continue threatens liberty because the best legal know-how and resources are only put only on one side, accelerating a leftist political monopoly that would have destroyed the country and made it unrecognizable if it had not been halted.
The 2020 election was an important inflection point.There was more suspicious activity in a national election there than we have seen in many a presidential contest.Hence, one or more BigLaw firms should have been lining up to represent the Trump side (just like they did on the Biden side). Instead, President Trump was starved of BigLaw support while Biden had his pick of the litter.
In just 20 years — from 2000 when BigLaw firm Gibson Dunn represented Bush the younger in Bush v Gore — not a single big firm would step up to try to help President Trump, which is backwards because (putting aside the anomaly of a big polling bounce after 9/11), President Trump is far more popular with ordinary people in larger numbers than Bush 43 ever was. And that is even more true as a matter of the level of enthusiasm in support for President Trump. It dwarfs the enthusiasm Bush 43 had.
The solution is for BigLaw to again hire in more conservatives from the best law schools. (They’re there but some of them are cowed and hiding too.) Then to give them promotion opportunities to partner.
For the BigLaw firms to also lateral in more conservative partners.To give a voice to the conservatives that are already inside BigLaw and to promote some to firm management — into leadership positions.And to encourage free speech inside and outside the firms, so conservatives don’t bite their tongues or get penalized in advancement for speaking their minds in intrafirm halls and councils.
50-50 balance does not need to be restored (although that would be nice), but my own personal estimate in terms of the power balance (not the head count because some lawyers are keeping their heads down) is that 25-30% of BigLaw has a pro-Left dominance right now of about 100%. And the remaining 70-75% of BigLaw is at the 80-20 or 90-10 level of power balance stacked against conservatives.The power balances we are seeing now at the BigLaw firms is wildly unhealthy for the Republic and it should end.
Keep this in mind as you hear the Left whine that many of us are fed up with BigLaw pretending it is neutral and centrist, when that is so far untrue as to be a farce.
To me it was a sad day when the leaders of our 2 parties said Bar Assoc should vet nominees for the bench
Ol Hickory “D”; Abe “R”.
In my opinion the best Chief justice (34 YEARS) was not a lawyer, never went to law school nor took Bar!
My hero’s name is John Marshall!
As long as ive been alive Bar has never approved a non lawyer for any bench! Bigots they are!