A Short Defense Of Jones Day

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I really don’t do this. Really.

I worked at Jones Day for 20 years, 17 as a partner. I was perfectly happy there. In 2009, I was offered an in-house job that I couldn’t resist, and I left the joint on good terms. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Jones Day in writing since, in what is now approaching 700 columns here at Above the Law. But it’s time to break my silence: The New York Times went overboard with its criticism this week.

Yeah, yeah: Some folks at Jones Day worked for Trump. Yeah, yeah: All right-thinking liberals — and, after January 6, to my eye, all right-thinking individuals — believe that Trump’s a scumbag. I certainly have been doing nothing in this column to curry favor with the possible next Trump administration. Here’s my final “yeah, yeah”: Some of the lawyers who worked in the Trump administration later returned to Jones Day.

I have this to say about all of that: Jones Day has about 2,500 lawyers. How many of those 2,500 worked on Trump stuff? 20? 30? 50? I can’t believe it was more than that; 50 lawyers staffs up an awful lot of big projects.

So what’s the average schlub partner in the Cleveland, or Los Angeles, or London office of Jones Day thinking about while those 50-ish lawyers are off doing their Trump things? “That Trump stuff might be a little offensive to me, but I’ve got other things to worry about — like tending to big corporate litigation or mergers and acquisitions.” The average Joe knows that the firm is playing its silly political games — the folks in D.C. always do — but that Joe is preoccupied with doing the things that busy lawyers do.

Moreover, be honest: Most of you would have an extraordinarily hard time turning down a high-ranking government job, even if the job were offered by an administration of which you were skeptical. (Think of the many arguments with which you disagreed that you’ve advanced in court for your clients.) One Jones Day partner agreed to serve as solicitor general under Trump. Solicitor general is an extraordinarily cool job; it permits you to represent the United States in the most interesting constitutional disputes of our time, assisted by the bevy of former Supreme Court clerks who work as assistants to the SG. Moreover, the job is generally not political — Dean Erwin Griswold worked at Jones Day after serving as the solicitor general in both the Johnson and Nixon administrations, so politics is obviously not dispositive.

I’m sure that a few of you — working at stridently liberal plaintiffs’-side firms and untempted by intellectual intrigue or resume-padding — would turn down the job of SG if offered it by a Republican administration. But I bet that most readers of this column would wrestle briefly with their consciences and then respond to the job offer with a hearty, “Hell, yeah; I accept!”

So, too, for serving as White House counsel. That must be a fascinating job. Most of it would not be political. You’d have hugely talented help — again, the staff is basically former Supreme Court clerks. And you’d be worth a fortune after acting in that capacity. If offered the job early in the Trump administration — before January 6 — how many of you would honestly have turned it down?

My argument is admittedly less convincing for jobs lower down in the governmental hierarchy. The jobs are less interesting as you move down the ladder, and your stomach might turn a bit more at the thought of helping someone with whom you disagree politically. But I bet many readers of this column insist that they’d never take a high-ranking government job, secure in the knowledge that there’s no chance they’d ever be offered one.

Finally, as weird as it sounds, Jones Day as a firm actually leans Democratic. In the 2020 federal elections, 86% of donations from Jones Day lawyers went to Democrats; in 2016, Jones Day lawyers donated $284,675 to Clinton and $7,622 to Trump. That’s no surprise — Jones Day lawyers by definition have post-graduate degrees; they’re not exactly cut from the less-educated mold that constitutes Trump’s base.

Could one be slightly offended by some of the choices that certain Jones Day lawyers made in the past six years? Maybe. But, so far as I know, no one from Jones Day has lost their license or is yet headed to jail on Trump’s behalf.

And the vast majority of the joint are merely lawyers being lawyers, only vaguely conscious of, and completely unaffected by, the political intrigues of the active few in D.C.

Let the nasty emails begin.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].

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Biglaw, Donald Trump, In-House Counsel, Jones Day, Mark Herrmann