The Hypocrisy of the Legal Elite

Jonathan Turley’s Op/Ed about the double standards the legal profession has adopted got me to thinking about how law firms have become little more than ideological enforcers of the left whenever politics rears its ugly head. 

Lawyers and the legal profession in general occupy a special place in liberal democracies like ours, which is why we expect that they strictly adhere to a code of ethics much more strictly than we do of others. At least, that used to be the case. 

As much as we like to hate lawyers–and often with good reason–they serve an important role in societies trying to maintain high levels of social trust. They are supposed to be zealous advocates of their clients to ensure that their rights are strictly observed, and in that role they often play the role of sophists whose job it is to spin things to the best advantage of their clients. However, they are also supposed to draw strict ethical lines beyond which they will not go to ensure that the system remains fair because without a fair system, trust in it will eventually collapse, and with it, the rule of law. 

…In prior years, Democratic groups unleashed a campaign to pressure firms to fire lawyers who represented Trump, the Republican Party, or conservative causes. It worked. I know lawyers who were told to drop Republican cases or else find new employment.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 12, 2025

The “get Trump” movement in both the Justice system and the legal profession stretched ethical boundaries far beyond the breaking point. The government’s legal apparatus broke the rules by essentially trying to criminalize Donald Trump’s and MAGA’s existence–inventing crimes to get the man and destroying lawyers who represented him and his supporters. 

Zealotry in opposing Trump was celebrated; zealotry in defending Trump was punished. In an adversarial system of justice bound by the rule of law, the system’s legitimacy was strained to the point where its credibility was lost. That, as much as anything else, handed both the Republican nomination and eventually the presidency to Trump. 

In prior years, Democratic groups unleashed a campaign to pressure firms to fire lawyers who represented Trump, the Republican Party, or conservative causes. That included boycotts and pressure campaigns targeting their clients. They were using the same tactic others used against figures like Elon Musk when he purchased Twitter and sought to dismantle its censorship system.

Their pressure campaigns worked. I personally know lawyers who were told to drop Republican cases or else find new employment — including partners who had to leave their longstanding firms.

Some of the letters signed recently by deans and law professors protesting Trump’s orders previously purged their schools of Republicans and conservatives. With only 9 percent of law professors identifying as conservative, most faculties have practically no Republicans or conservatives left.

These campaigns went beyond law firms. Trump Accountability Project, led by former Obama and Buttigieg staffers,  made lists of Trump administration officials to hound them out of any employment opportunities.

These blacklists later morphed into a demand for the disbarment of dozens of lawyers and members of Congress.

Lawyers are up in arms about Trump’s removing the security clearances of law firms that clearly overstepped the lines of ethics in their “get Trump” efforts–and in this, Turley agrees. (I do not agree, by the way–when law firms go so far beyond ethical lines, as some of them did, they should lose privileges and be harshly punished). But Turley notes the utter hypocrisy of these firms and of the legal profession as a whole. For years they have been very selective about their commitment to the rule of law and the right of everybody to counsel. 

Firms that do pro bono work for murderers worked hard to punish any lawyer who represented Donald Trump, to the point that representing Trump created the risk of disbarment at worst, or boycotts pushed by fellow lawyers at best. It’s pretty rich that the same people are rushing to defend lawyers who pushed outright hoaxes that cost the country dearly, and even suborned perjury to cover their tracks when they exceeded the boundaries of legal ethics and the law itself. 

Breaking the law for ideological reasons has become common. Law firms and law schools regularly violate civil rights laws to further their ideological ends. It is obvious that law schools and firms promote policies that are plainly illegal, and do so because they have been encouraged by the government to do so. 

As the Trump administration begins to enforce black-letter law confirmed by the Supreme Court itself, these firms will go to the mat to defend their right to violate laws because, well, they want to. And since they are liberals, they believe that the laws aren’t even speed bumps on the road to implementing their agenda. 

44 Law Firms Hit With Discrimination Complaint Over Race-Based Internshiphttps://t.co/D2gAqOwo5J

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 12, 2025

The legal profession will no doubt rally to the cause of their compatriots. The people who shouted “Nobody is above the law!,” even when they have to stretch the law so far that any rational interpretation wouldn’t support their claims, will rush to the defense of lawbreakers not just because they are lawyers, but because those lawyers are, in their view, breaking the law for good reasons. 

No system of law–or at least a system of law that is committed to preserving social trust and the belief that the legal system ensures fairness for all–can long survive this assault on its reputation for blind justice. 

The insurrection of the judges is just one aspect of the leftist assault on our legal norms. The entire profession is, as with so many of our elite institutions, corrupted by ideology. 

All the systems of checks and balances are behaving in the most corrupt fashion. Our public health institutions, our legal profession, journalists, and academic institutions are moving in lockstep to promote ideological goals. They aren’t zealous advocates for the truth; they have become enforcers of liberal orthodoxy for whom the rules no longer apply.