Biglaw

Biglaw Is Cleaning Up This Democratic Primary Season

That's a lot of money in billables.

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Lawyers are integral to almost every large-scale event, including the Democratic primary. And it makes sense, since all those candidates need attorneys to advise them on all manner of election issues — they wouldn’t want to inadvertently collude with a foreign nation or anything. Thanks to campaign finance disclosure, we are getting a sense of which firms are doing the most business with Democratic candidates for president.

As reported by Law.com, the Biglaw firm of Perkins Coie is really raking in the fees. Elizabeth Warren has paid the firm $320,000 dollars. And she isn’t the only candidate turning to Perkins Coie. Kamala Harris also paid the firm this season — to the tune of $90,000 — and the head of Perkins Coie’s political law practice, Marc Elias, is the campaign’s general counsel. Jay Inslee spent approximately $110,000 with Perkins Coie. Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar spent more than $85,000 at the firm according to financial disclosure documents. Plus Julian Castro spent $23,000 with Perkins Coie and John Hickenlooper racked up a $4,000 legal bill with the firm.

That’s nearly $750,000 in billables for advising Dems this season. Not bad at all.

While Perkins Coie had an eye-catching haul, they aren’t the only firm out there advising Democrats. Pete Buttigieg paid more than $320,000 to Jenner & Block, and he has a Harvard classmate and partner at the firm, Previn Warren, as the campaign’s general counsel. Bernie Sanders spent $260,000 on legal services, the majority of it going to Garvey Schubert Barer.

Utrecht, Kleinfeld, Fiori, Partners also got in the game, receiving $15,000 from Michael Bennet as well as $40,000 from Inslee and $45,000 from Castro. Covington & Burling got almost $68,000 from Joe Biden’s campaign. John Delaney split his $30,000 legal spend between Arent Fox, Ballard Spahr, and Cozen O’Connor.

And, for the sake of completeness, we’ll go through they rest of the candidates’ legal spend. Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock got $64,114 from Beto O’Rourke. Andrew Yang spent $10,000 with Dentons. Tim Ryan spent $8,500 with Venable. Tulsi Gabbard’s $7,500 in legal spending was divided between Bergeson and Blank Rome. Trister, Ross, Schadler & Gold got ~$3,500 from Bill de Blasio.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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