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BigLaw firms are moving further to the left, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by lawyers and staff members in BigLaw and larger plaintiffs-side law firms. (Image from Shutterstock)
BigLaw firms are moving further to the left, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by lawyers and staff members in BigLaw and larger plaintiffs-side law firms.
The findings: 92.45% of campaign contributions by that group went to Democrats in 2023 and 2024, according to a Bloomberg Law column and a slightly different version of the story published by Original Jurisdiction. The roughly 12-1 ratio of Democratic to Republican contributions is “significantly up” from a 6-1 ratio found in a 2021 analysis of the years 2017 through 2020, the articles report.
Derek Muller, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, did the analysis and provided details at his blog Excess of Democracy.
Attorneys and staff members at the studied firms contributed about $52 million altogether to Democratic-affiliated groups compared to about $4 million for Republican-affiliated groups.
“This represents a pretty significant shift to the left,” Muller told Bloomberg Law.
Muller’s findings are based on campaign contributions by attorneys and staff member at the nation’s 100 top-grossing firms and 50 larger plaintiffs-side firms. He looked at contributions to the campaigns of former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump; to major party organizations; and to aggregators of campaign contributions.
Among the nation’s top-grossing firms, these had the highest percentage of contributions to Democratic campaigns:
• Proskauer Rose (100%)
• Susman Godfrey (100%)
• Fenwick & West (99.8%)
• Schulte Roth & Zabel (99.8%)
• Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (99.7%)
• Steptoe (99.7%)
• Cozen O’Connor (99.7%)
• Crowell & Moring (99.5%)
• Perkins Coie (99.4%)
• Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson (99.4%)
• Davis Wright Tremaine (99.4%)
• A&O Shearman (99.3%)
• Covington & Burling (99.2%)
• Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo (99.1%)
• McDermott Will & Emery (99.1%)
• Reed Smith (99%)
These BigLaw firms also favored Democrats, but they had the lowest percentage of contributions to Democratic campaigns:
• Winston & Strawn (62%)
• Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough (66.4%)
• Fish & Richardson (70.5%)
• Taft Stettinius & Hollister (71.2%)
• Holland & Knight (72.9%)
• Fox Rothschild (74.7%)
• ArentFox Schiff (75.7%)
• Husch Blackwell (77%)
• Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith (77.3%)
• Sullivan & Cromwell (77.9%)
• Jones Day (78%)
• Kirkland & Ellis (79.7%)
• Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart (81.5%)
• Squire Patton Boggs (81.6%)
• Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (81.9%)
• Baker & Hostetler (82%)
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