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Raging About John Roberts's Wife 'Scandal' Really Making Liberals Look Stupid

Love the energy, but this isn't a big deal.

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To be very clear, the Supreme Court is a cesspool of ethical scandals right now and they’re overwhelmingly about conservative misconduct. Clarence Thomas is taking $500K in vacations and getting his mom rent-free housing off of right-wing donors with business before the Court. Meanwhile, his wife is an ethical quagmire all by herself. Neil Gorsuch is collecting cushy trips from law schools trying to shoot up the rankings and forgetting to disclose that law firm leaders are buying his property. Sam Alito owns tons of oil and gas stock and… maybe will recuse himself in cases that directly impact those shares? Maybe.

Amid all of these very real scandals, social media spent the weekend tittering that the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts made a little over $10 million over the course of eight years doing legal recruiting — something we already knew and already didn’t care about. Yet, liberals diverted a ton of emotional energy from the actual scandals at the Supreme Court to decry all the major corporate law firms paying Jane Roberts to get in good graces with John Roberts and other entirely nonsensical gibberish.

Getting big checks from major law firms might seem like an ethical dilemma, but all the outrage about it betrays a lack of understanding about how the legal industry works. Let’s break down some key issues:

1. Are Biglaw firms paying Jane Roberts?

Yes, though not generally because they’ve “hired” Roberts or anything like that. Generally speaking, Roberts will present a prospective lateral partner to a number of law firms. The partner and the firms will go through the standard Biglaw mating dance and whatever firm ends up winning that lawyer’s services will compensate Roberts for the introduction and management of the process.

2. This still seems like a lot of money, no?

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No, not really. As an industry, recruiters are generally compensated based on a percentage of the salary a lateral prospect will earn. As you might imagine, in a world where partners are routinely making seven-figure salaries, that can add up fast. While Roberts made a bit over a million a year, if she’s placing partners, that could be the result of a handful of laterals.

3. But isn’t she beholden to these firms for the money she gets?

Not in the least. She likely couldn’t care less if her candidate chooses to join Simpson or Skadden because she gets the same check either way. And while she may deliver a book of business to a specific firm one day, in a matter of months she’ll be pulling a book of business away from that same firm to head for greener pastures.

4. Shouldn’t Roberts at least disclose which firms paid which amounts?

Perhaps… though that arguably risks misleading the public through overinclusion. Even though her client is ultimately the firm, the bulk of the services she provides will be to the individual lawyer evaluating multiple offers and it’s that lawyer who makes the decision that ends up getting her paid. The indirect nature of this all — that the individual partner ultimately controls who pays Roberts and who doesn’t — undermines all the quid pro quo claims. It also means that disclosing a payment from, say, Baker Botts makes them look like they were trying to give Roberts money on the sly when in reality they just happened to win the sweepstakes for a book of business that just as easily could’ve gone anywhere else without Roberts having any influence on the ultimate decision.

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4. Wouldn’t the firms tilt the scale toward hiring her prospects to curry favor with John Roberts?

Your argument is that, a Biglaw firm might tie up years of multimillion-dollar compensation on a revenue sink of a partner so they could write a one-time $300K check to Jane Roberts? That’s… not how these firms got to the top of the heap. Do you know how little of a damn these firms care about “winning a Supreme Court case”?

5. Isn’t winning Supreme Court cases the most important thing in all of law?

Oh, my sweet summer child. Go ask Paul Clement who won a landmark Supreme Court decision last year and Kirkland immediately told him to pound sand. Because law firms care a lot more about their ability to advise on the next mega-merger than parachute into an oral argument.

6. Are you sure about all this? You don’t have one of those blue checkmarks anymore.

Yes. But you don’t even have to take my word for it. Gabe Roth, of Fix the Court, whose entire job is laser-focused on improving ethical standards at the Supreme Court had this to say:

The recent story about the commissions that Chief Justice Roberts’ wife Jane has received for her legal recruiting work is largely much ado about nothing. Would we be in a better place if the legal profession were more diffuse with, say, 200 or 500 or 1,000 law firms bringing cases to SCOTUS? Sure. But we’re not, so Jane should not be criticized too harshly for earning a living with the help of some of the firms that happen to be frequent filers at One First Street.

Look, if the Democrats believe in the electoral value of the out-of-control Supreme Court narrative and see this as one more drop of fuel for the already raging fire, so be it. But it’s a disingenuous claim that frankly undermines the more serious ethical lapses here by comparison. It makes it easier to shrug off the whole body of ethical complaints as mere nitpicking when it’s anything but.

And not for nothing, but we don’t need more disingenuous arguments out there. John Roberts is out here making all the bad faith ethics arguments we could ever need.

Earlier: Yes, A Supreme Court Justice’s Spouse Makes A Ton From Biglaw Firms. No, This Is Not Actually A Big Deal.
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HeadshotJoe 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.

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