[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Pay to Play V. Paying To Play D-1. Lawyers and Law Firms Contributed $5.4 Million

More than 5,000 attorneys affiliated with more than 1,700 law firms helped file the 3,942 Supreme Court petitions studied here. The 10 justices received $5.4 million from these attorneys, their law firms, and other attorneys in these firms. This lawyer money accounts for 81 percent of the $6.7 million in petitioner money that the justices raised.
 
 
 

Petitioners Gave Justices $6.7 Million

 
 

The average legal counsel contributing more than $250,000 was 6.4 times more likely than the average non-contributing counsel to have a petition accepted. The average legal counsel contributing more than $100,000 was 4 times more likely than the average non-contributing counsel to have a petition accepted. Across the board, the more that the petitioning counsel gave, the greater the likelihood that the court would accept its petitions.

 

Here again, there is a strong correlation between the amount of money that the petitioning legal counsel contributed to the justices and the likelihood that the justices would accept their petitions. While the justices accepted just 9 percent of the petitions filed by legal counsel that did not contribute to the justices’ campaigns, they accepted 58 percent of the petitions filed by the two firms that gave the justices more than $250,000 (Vinson & Elkins and Baker Botts). In fact, the justices accepted an astounding 74 percent of the 19 petitions filed by Baker Botts, the former firm of Chief Justice Tom Phillips.

Data Note: In this section—and in the next one on petitioning parties—the analysis shifts from the 3,942 individual petitions studied in this report to each filing made by every petitioner. There are many more petitioner filings than petitions because a single petition can involve multiple attorneys, law firms and parties.