As lawyers, you rest at the center of that Venn diagram of “high-information voter” and “having enough disposable income to actually do something about it” so it’s unsurprising that lawyer money flows into political campaigns with as much ease as it flows to Sallie Mae. With the exception of some talented personal injury attorneys who buy private jets and football fields, lawyers aren’t often among the super-rich. Put simply, lawyers generally have enough money to buy their kid into an Ivy, but not enough to buy a new dorm to get their kid into an Ivy. It’s a subtle but important difference.
But as long as we have campaign finance laws — by that I mean, until the next Supreme Court case on campaign finance — lawyers can play with the plutocrats when it comes to giving to individual political campaigns, making attorneys an enviable sector of the donor class for any candidate to bring into the tent.
Bloomberg Law’s Roy Strom took a deep dive into attorney donations and found that lawyers are helping out the Democrats this cycle at an almost unbelievable clip. As of today, 95 percent of law firm employee cash is going to Democrats:
Lawyers and employees of the nation’s law firms have contributed nearly $17 million to presidential campaigns so far this election cycle and 95% of the total has gone to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. President Donald Trump’s campaign has raised just over $785,000 from lawyers and law firms.
In fairness, the Democratic contest boasts the largest field in history while the Republicans are so all in on Trump that they’re canceling primaries. Money should flow to the contests that are being, you know, contested. On the other hand, the Center for Responsive Politics compared figures up through the third quarter of the year before an election since 2004 — another election featuring a Republican incumbent who had lost the popular vote — and found that traditionally Republicans secure 41 percent of lawyer donations by this point. In that context, the swing to a 95-5 margin is damning.
Even Jones Day is giving 70-30 in favor of Democratic candidates! Maybe they just want all their partners back.
Call it the George Conway effect if you want. Conway’s impassioned defense of the rule of law against the machinations of his own wife reflects the mood of a lot of long-time conservative lawyers watching their brand of smugly ruthless libertarianism get ground into the mud by Trump’s soggy noodle Il Duce impression. These are the people who really relished the prep school blazer image and it’s all crumbling into a morass of monster truck rallies and meth. At this point, the only conservative lawyers still backing Trump are either already on the bench or currently ignoring a subpoena. Meanwhile firms are driving dumptrucks full of cash to Democratic candidates.
But which candidates get the most love from attorneys? Joe Biden is taking top marks right now, but he’s also the frontrunner and likely locked up his dollars before embarking on his traditional Democratic primary quest of alienating every single constituency one by one. Kamala Harris unsurprisingly receives the second most love based on a campaign predicated entirely upon reminding everyone that she is, in fact, a lawyer. There are associates going home for their first Thanksgiving since passing the bar next week who won’t hear about their job as much as Harris will mention it in a 24-hour period. This also tracks if one reads these donations as a sign that conservative lawyers are crossing over this cycle, giving a boost to the two most conservative candidates in the field who aren’t Michael Bloomberg’s vanity project. It also likely explains why Mayor Pete clocks in at third, probably surging in donations after he decided he’d junk his whole campaign to that point and try to be a version of Joe Biden before the weight of his decades of licking his finger and sticking it in the political light socket wore him down.
Law professor Liz Warren is getting the sixth most, putting her right ahead of Trump, despite offering the legal industry a lifeline with the promise of unending antitrust and consumer protection suits. There might be a lot of Harvard Law grads out there still too shaken by a cold call to give her their money.
Check out more insights from the article including some analysis on the changing ideological bent of the legal profession over at Bloomberg Law.
Snubbing Trump, Lawyers Doling More Cash to Democrats [Bloomberg Law]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.