Biden Taps BigLaw Brainpower For Transition Squad

About two dozen BigLaw lawyers will help plan President-elect Joe Biden's takeover of the federal government, the transition team announced Tuesday, including a Jones Day partner who will prime the Department of Justice and two federal election commissions even as her colleagues help represent the GOP in mail-in voting litigation.

The Jones Day partner, Shirlethia Franklin, will review the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and several other agencies for the transition team. She was deputy chief of staff to then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Obama administration before she joined Jones Day in 2017.

Franklin, other attorneys and a spokesperson for Jones Day did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

The storied Cleveland-based firm has not been uniformly loyal to President Donald Trump, even as it has performed much of his campaign's legal work. BigLaw attorneys have given far more donations to Biden than Trump, including at Jones Day. Even at the firms that gave the most to Trump, attorneys gave many times more money to Biden's campaign, according to a Law360 analysis of federal election records.

Currently, Jones Day lawyers are fighting efforts to count late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state won by Biden, according to media projections. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ordered that Pennsylvania counties segregate and separately count any mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day.

While Franklin's inclusion on the transition team's agency review list might be the most dramatic, Latham & Watkins LLP is best represented.

Latham energy environmental law counsel Nikki Buffa will review the Council on Environmental Quality. Latham partner Michael Bosworth — a veteran of the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — will review the Department of Justice. Additionally, Latham Director of Administration Matt Fritz, a former Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff, is on the team reviewing the EPA.

Those tapped have extensive governmental experience.

Among them, Danielle Conley, co-chair of WilmerHale's anti-discrimination practice, was a top adviser to former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates; Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP partner Jonathan Meyer has 17 years of experience in federal government, including as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and counselor to then-Senator Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee; and Morrison & Foerster's Bob Litt, a former general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, will be working with the intelligence community.

Here is the BigLaw talent helping with the Biden transition efforts:


--Editing by Bruce Goldman

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.