A Groundless Attack on Conservative Law Firms
31st August 2022
A recent magazine section in the Sunday New York Times breathlessly announced the “untold story of Jones Day’s push to move American government and courts to the right.” Jones Day is a powerful and well-respected law firm. The author of this exposé is an investigative reporter, David Enrich, who draws this excerpt from his new book, Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice, whose lurid title all too well sums up his grandiose thesis. Enrich is not a lawyer, nor does he argue like one. Instead, his modus operandi is to merely assume that Donald Trump, any of his associates, and indeed any conservative cause deserve intense public condemnation.
Enrich wants to delegitimize Jones Day by turning the firm into an arch-villain. He hopes first to make Trump persona non grata, so that large corporate law firms will rid themselves of Trump loyalists and dissociate themselves from any conservative causes. In going after Jones Day, Enrich lurches into dangerous territory by branding it ethically improper, if not downright immoral, for individuals to defend causes with which Enrich disagrees. His ultimate objective is to neutralize conservative law firms, a goal toward which at least one giant law firm appears already to have moved. (Kirkland & Ellis parted ways with two of its most distinguished lawyers—Paul Clement and Erin Murphy—because of their successful and sound defense of gun rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).) It would be equally wrong to mount this kind of crusade against any left-wing firm that decided to defend any of President Joe Biden’s initiatives on immigration, student loans, foreign affairs, or climate change. On both sides, it is far better to argue a case on the merits than to cast aspersions on the people and causes with which you disagree.