When I served as Treasurer of Ohio, helping to keep the state books balanced, the question of whether states should ever hire outside lawyers came up often and comparatively little attention was paid to who was being hired and whether state contracts truly protected the state and aligned with their values. That has long needed to change. Given new data that has come to light about the donations being made by the nation’s biggest law firms and trial lawyers, and the growing number of ethics-related headlines involving states and their outside counsel, there is no better time than now to revisit and kick of some tires.
The new data that has really caught my attention is from Professor Derek Muller at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Muller has been looking at the political donations from the largest law firms in America since 2013 and just posted his analysis of the 2024 election cycle, which showed a truly massive shift to the left amongst almost every law firm he has been tracking in his datasets.
What Professor Muller found for his most recent report—covering contributions during 2023 and 2024—was clear cut: “the vast majority of firms had fewer than 10% of contributions go to major Republican outlets, and the bulk of those saw less than 5%.” And the shift from the last report, in 2020, was especially stark: “92.45% of contributions went to Democrats, about a 12-to-1 ratio, up from the 6-to-1 ratio back in 2020.”
Put simply, the situation in America’s law firms is bad and getting worse. And that goes doubly for the trial lawyers, who at this point are so lopsided that it is hard to see any red on the charts. As Professor Muller noted in his section on the fifty most prominent trial lawyer shops: “Most of these firms had 99% to 100% donations to Democrats.”
We are in the midst of a wave of lawfare against anything that resists the Left: the Trump Administration, industries that have refused to bend the knee to progressive policy preferences, and individuals who dare disagree or speak up against the Left’s worldview. And much of this is being facilitated by the very same law firms that Professor Muller has now uncovered as being massive, lopsided donors to left-wing politics—they are the ones suing to enforce ESG mandates, suing to stop the Trump Administration, and suing to force us to fund Planned Parenthood, Harvard University, NPR, and their ilk.
Given that firms have moved left in their donations and have taken on a more and more active role in the various lawfare campaigns out there, it is time for state officials on our side of the aisle to look around and make sure that they aren’t unwitting participants in all of this, and that they are happy with where their taxpayer dollars are flowing.
I’ll be honest, they might not like what they find. Republicans have already been uncovering and terminating contracts with giant left-wing firms like Morgan and Morgan, Perkins Coie, and others. And what has come out of that has raised as many questions as answers. After Kansas terminated its contract with Morgan and Morgan, there were allegations by state officials that Morgan and Morgan attorneys attempted to withhold case files, interview notes, and other materials, triggering threats of potential bar complaints from state staff alongside political mudslinging by Morgan & Morgan’s attorneys. And recent legal maneuvering around another one of the trial law firms on Professor Muller’s list has raised related questions, as Motley Rice has been accused of having “obtained confidential information about how the company works through its prior representations of,” states “and then began actively litigating against OptumRx in opioid cases around the country.”
In both these instances, the core concern is that outside counsel could be taking information obtained in state investigations and using it for their own private purposes. To a non-lawyer like me, this smacks of what amounts to insider trading on state information. And it also raises the specter that money that should go into state coffers, money that is handled by State Treasurers and the like, is instead getting diverted to other clients and other cases. Since we know from Professor Muller’s research that these law firms are not on our team, I have every confidence that any such diversion would be a win for the leftand a loss for our side of the aisle.
This is why every State Attorney General’s Office, Treasurer’s Office, or other office with authority over outside counsel contracts should proactively review their existing contracts and their ongoing contract templates. Do they like the lawyers they have? Is the state feeding into left-wing lawfare? Are conflicts-of-interest provisions strong enough to stop left-wing hijack?
Given recent developments, state officials can no longer treat outside counsel contracting as routine. It is time for officials to take a closer look and ensure their states are fully protected and that they aren’t being used and abused by the architects of left-wing lawfare.
Ken Blackwell served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio State Treasurer, and Ohio Secretary of State.