When Is A Free Something Ever Really Free?
Such services or even products are actually protecting something or someone - be vigilant...
via Cynical Publius, X.com
Our Note: Like anything and everything, nothing is ever free. Someone is picking up the tab else the entity offering the free service and/or product could very well be finding its financial status very stressed. The construction and maintenance of their buildings, the cleaning services, maintaining a parking area for visitors and employees, the free coffee all have to be paid for as even they would not provide their services and/or products for free. And those “free” serves are always tied to something or even someone that is being protected. Cynical Publius’s post starts here…
It’s great to see Americans finally systematically dismantling the Deep State.
But the Deep State has many, many components and tools, some of which most people are not even aware of.
I want to talk about one of those hidden components now.
One of the more pernicious components of the Deep State—and something that will be very hard to defeat—is the pro bono programs of “BigLaw” firms.
To see what I mean, Google the name of your favorite BigLaw firm and the words “pro bono.”
You’ll soon discover that there are literally armies of highly-paid, highly-educated lawyers litigating all of the left’s favorite causes, from abortion to deprivation of gun rights, to mutilating of children's genitalia, to protecting illegal aliens, to you name it.
When you see that some Obama-appointed federal district court judge in some insanely liberal district enjoined some Trump 2.0 initiative, invariably pro bono BigLaw lawyers are involved.
Personal anecdote: I went to law school right out of the Army and joined a BigLaw firm. After I joined, my firm proudly trumpeted that they had served as pro bono counsel for Gitmo terrorists. You know—the same terrorists who had been trying to kill me a few years earlier.
The Latin words “pro bono” mean “for good,” with an implication—in the legal context—of “for free.”
And therein lies the Achilles’ heel of leftist pro bono law—it’s not “free,” not really.
That “free” work is actually funded by paying clients.
BigLaw first-year associates bill out at around $850 an hour these days, with senior associates and partners often approaching and sometimes over $2,000 per hour.
Those outrageous fees are what fund leftist pro bono litigation—ultimately it is PAYING CLIENTS who pay to promote these leftist causes.
So how do we fix this?
Big clients of BigLaw firms need to ask what sorts of pro bono projects these firms are involved in, and if the answer is the usual array of neo-Marxist causes, then the big client needs to take their big business and big legal fees elsewhere to a BigLaw firm not enmeshed in protecting the Deep State.
The Bill Ackmans and Elon Musks of the world need to start asking these questions, and before long these firms will see what their leftist advocacy is doing to their bottom line, and necessary change will occur.
But awareness is the key, hence this post.