Notre Dame Law School professor Derek Muller found that lawyers at America’s top firms donated 12 times as much to Democrats in 2024 as they did Republicans, an increase from a 6-to-1 ratio in 2020
Attorneys at the nation’s biggest and most prestigious law firms have moved further to the left since the 2020 election despite a rightward shift among the broader electorate during former president Joe Biden’s time in office, a new study shows.
Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, found that firms within the AmLaw 100—an annual ranking of the largest legal practices in the United States—donated $52 million to Democrats and just $4 million to Republicans during the 2024 election cycle. This amounts to a 12-to-1 ratio favoring Democrats, a marked increase from the 6-to-1 ratio among AmLaw 100 firms during the 2020 campaign.
Muller told lawyer and legal writer David Lat, who first reported on his research, that he was “surprised to see such a stark shift, in only four years.”
Muller’s research comes during a second Trump term that has seen increased tension between the White House and Big Law. President Donald Trump earlier this year signed executive orders targeting several prominent left-leaning law firms, accusing Perkins Coie LLP of “undermining democratic elections” and Jenner & Block of “racial discrimination.”
Republican attorneys general had previously warned that many AmLaw 100 firms could be in violation of civil rights law through maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, alleging that the companies had engaged in “discriminatory practices including explicit racial quotas and preferences in hiring, recruiting, retention, promotion, and advancement.”
The 2024 election results and party registration trends demonstrate a clear rightward shift among the U.S. electorate. The popular vote swung 6 points in Trump’s direction in 2024 compared to 2020, and more than 89 percent of all counties in the United States shifted toward Trump last November.
Those numbers are not reflected among the country’s most prominent law firms. As Lat reported, more than 99 percent of employee donations at 16 of the top 100 firms went to Democratic Party-affiliated groups. He also noted that less than 10 percent of donations from the vast majority of the AmLaw-listed firms went to Republican-affiliated groups. Ninety-four out of the 100 had at least 75 percent of employee contributions go to Democrats, and zero firms had a majority of donations go to the GOP.
Muller’s research aligns with his previous finding that top law firms overwhelmingly support liberal groups over their conservative counterparts in political pro bono cases. According to Muller’s analysis, the firms filed significantly more friend-of-the-court briefs in favor of the left-leaning side in high-profile, political Supreme Court cases as opposed to the right-leaning side.
