New Data from Professor Derek Muller Is a Fresh Wake-up Call on the Dangers of Woke Trial Lawyers

In my previous post, I examined Professor Derek Muller’s disturbing findings about political contributions from the AmLaw 100—the nation’s largest corporate law firms. The data revealed overwhelming ideological uniformity, with not a single AmLaw 100 firm showing majority Republican giving among employees who donated to presidential candidates, major party organizations, or two of the largest aggregators of campaign contributions. But as concerning as those numbers are, they pale in comparison to what Muller found when he examined the nation’s top plaintiffs’ firms.

However liberal Big Law has generally become, it has nothing on the complete ideological capture evident among top trial lawyers. Muller’s analysis of 50 leading plaintiffs’ firms is illustrated by the following chart, which breaks down their giving ratio in 2023–2024:

The contribution patterns are so lopsided that they beggar belief. Firm after firm shows 100% Democratic giving by their employees—not 95%, not 98%, but literally every dollar going to liberal causes. Those with perfect Democratic records include Edelson, MoloLamken, and Grant & Eisenhofer. These aren’t outliers; this is the norm.

Even firms that fall short of 100% still show staggering uniformity. Lieff Cabraser employees gave over $2 million to Democrats versus just $204 to Republicans—99.99% Democratic alignment. Kellogg Hansen gave $1.1 million to Democrats and $1,085 to Republicans—99.9% Democratic. Seven of the top 50 firms’ employees gave over 25% to Republicans, including four that gave mostly to Republicans. But only one other firm with employees who made political donations gave less than 90% to Democrats, and only two others beyond that gave less than 97% to Democrats. (One firm, Sauder Schelkopf, did not give at all to the tracked campaign entitites.)

Except for the few outliers, we are looking at an ideological monolith. These firms represent a complete commitment to progressive political projects, devoid of nuance. Their litigation strategies reflect exactly that. Remember, this is the same trial lawyer community that has been driving much of the Left’s lawfare campaign against disfavored industries and conservative policy priorities. Whether it’s climate litigation against energy companies, gunmaker liability theories, or attacks on religious liberty, activist plaintiffs’ firms have become the legal shock troops for progressive activism.

Conservatives have at times been slow to recognize this coordinated assault. Recall a few years ago the collaboration between Patrick Morrisey, then West Virginia’s attorney general, and Motley Rice, a powerhouse of left-wing lawyers that would total 99.7% Democratic donations during the 2024 election cycle. But other conservatives have recognized the problem and taken corrective action. Attorneys general Steve Marshall of Alabama, Austin Knudsen of Montana, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Ken Paxton of Texas, and Mark Brnovich of Arizona cut ties with the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), which has close and lucrative ties to plaintiffs’ firms that specialize in left-wing litigation. In 2022, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, joined by attorneys general from Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia, demanded financial accountability from NAAG as they confronted the organization on its partisanship. The following year, new attorneys general Kris Kobach of Kansas and Brenna Bird of Iowa fired Morgan & Morgan, which had contracted with the states on a contingency basis; the firm’s employees would give 98.8% of its donations, a total of nearly $1.5 million, to Democrats during the 2024 cycle. All of these states have come a long way in taking on the shady trial lawyer pipeline that benefits so many of these firms at the public’s expense.

Professor Muller does not purport to provide exhaustive metrics of political giving, but he has given us enough to confirm what these Republican attorneys general have understood by observation. When firms with perfect or near perfect Democratic donation records bring climate litigation seeking to reshape energy policy or file suits seeking to mandate ESG compliance, they are pursuing outcomes their political allies could not achieve at the ballot box. This matters enormously for state and federal policymakers, business leaders, and conservative legal advocates. And the pattern is not subtle. Woke trial lawyers are wolves that come as wolves, not as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This is the fresh wake-up call conservatives needed. The trial lawyer threat is not theoretical or exaggerated. It is documented in cold, hard contribution data showing ideological uniformity that would make any fundraiser jealous. So when they come knocking with the next round of lawfare—the next climate case, the next assault on religious liberty, the next attempt to bankrupt a disfavored industry—there is simply no excuse for conservatives not to know exactly who is at the door.