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Of the 66 most successful lawyers, 51 worked for law firms that primarily represented corporate interests. Related contentĪnalyzing the impact of the Supreme Court bar Some legal experts contend that the reliance on a small cluster of specialists, most working on behalf of businesses, has turned the Supreme Court into an echo chamber – a place where an elite group of jurists embraces an elite group of lawyers who reinforce narrow views of how the law should be construed. The results: a decided advantage for corporate America, and a growing insularity at the court. The Reuters examination of the Supreme Court’s docket, the most comprehensive ever, suggests that the justices essentially have added a new criterion to whether the court takes an appeal – one that goes beyond the merits of a case and extends to the merits of the lawyer who is bringing it. They are the elite of the elite: Although they account for far less than 1 percent of lawyers who filed appeals to the Supreme Court, these attorneys were involved in 43 percent of the cases the high court chose to decide from 2004 through 2012. That’s because about half worked for justices past or present, and some socialize with them. But many are familiar to the nine justices. None of these lawyers is a household name. The lawyers are the most influential members of one of the most powerful specialties in America: the business of practicing before the Supreme Court. Their appeals were at least six times more likely to be accepted by the court than were all others filed by private lawyers during that period. Supreme Court building proclaims a high ideal: “Equal Justice Under Law.”īut inside, an elite cadre of lawyers has emerged as first among equals, giving their clients a disproportionate chance to influence the law of the land.Ī Reuters examination of nine years of cases shows that 66 of the 17,000 lawyers who petitioned the Supreme Court succeeded at getting their clients’ appeals heard at a remarkable rate. WASHINGTON – The marble façade of the U.S.