High-profile lawyers gave Gavin Newsom free legal help on death penalty, prison health care
High-powered law firms have provided hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free legal work for Gov. Gavin Newsom since he took office, giving counsel on California’s death penalty moratorium and the state’s legal battle over prison health care, public records show.
Law firm Boies Schiller Flexner provided more than $405,000 in legal services to help Newsom with his death penalty moratorium, according to records filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission. Another firm, Robins Kaplan, contributed nearly $450,000 in free representation in Coleman v. Newsom, the ongoing case that prompted California’s prison realignment.
Newsom reported the work as “behested payments,” donations made at an elected official’s request for charitable or governmental purposes.
Seeking legal advice from outside counsel isn’t unusual in state government, said Jessica Levinson, a government ethics expert and Loyola Law School professor. She pointed to the Legislature’s hiring of former Attorney General Eric Holder to fight President Donald Trump’s policies in 2017 as an example.
“Why would you go to an outside firm? Because they have knowledge and expertise that you can’t find in-house,” she said.
Enlisting outside counsel opens the door for conflicts of interest because private firms, unlike government lawyers, may have financial or political motives different from those of California taxpayers, Levinson said. But, overall, she said free legal work from normally expensive top-flight firms appears to be a net benefit for the state.
“This is a pretty big win for taxpayers,” she said. “These are top notch lawyers providing legal expertise to Californians.”
For the outside firms, giving free legal help could also curry favor with Newsom, Levinson said. Unlike campaign contributions, which are capped, there is no limit on behested payments.
Managing partners and attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner contributed more than $100,000 to Newsom’s 2018 campaign.
“This is probably a way around the contribution limits, as behested payments typically are,” Levinson said.
In its behested payment filings, Newsom’s office dated the work from Boies Schiller Flexner in August, but it’s unclear exactly when the legal services performed. Newsom halted state executions in March.
Newsom spokeswoman Vicky Waters declined to answer questions about the law firm’s work, citing attorney-client privilege, but gave a general statement.
“The Administration seeks guidance involving various issues of public interest from experts in many fields, including in the legal realm,” she wrote in an email.
A spokesman for the Boies Schiller Flexner declined to comment.
Newsom chief of staff Ann O’Leary was a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner for nearly two years before she left to join the Newsom administration.
The firm’s founder, David Boies, is known for representing Al Gore during the 2000 election recount and for defending same-sex marriage in California. He’s been under recent scrutiny recently for representing film producer Harvey Weinstein. Boies publicly supported Newsom’s approval of a state law that aimed to force President Donald Trump to release his tax returns, although the legislation has since been blocked in court.
Boies also gave $57,400 to Newsom’s campaign for governor, the contribution limit for that race. Jonathan Schiller, another managing partner at the firm, contributed $25,000. In total, Boies, Schiller and several other attorneys at the firm contributed more than $100,000 to Newsom’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.
Waters of Newsom’s office also declined to answer questions about nearly $450,000 in free legal work by Robins Kaplan LLP, a Minneapolis-based law firm.
Records show lawyers at the firm provided free representation in Coleman v. Newsom. Originally filed in 1995, the case prompted California’s prison realignment and placed mental health services in California prisons under court-ordered supervision.
Two Robins Kaplan lawyers representing Newsom in the case, Glenn Danas and Roman Silberfeld, declined to comment specifically about their work for the governor.
“Robins Kaplan LLP has a long tradition of doing pro bono work to address a broad array of important legal issues,” the two lawyers wrote in a statement. “We’re proud to be working with Governor Newsom’s administration on this matter.”
The legal work is among roughly $14 million in behested payments Newsom has received since being elected governor. Most of that money went to the California Fire Foundation, which the governor raised money for as part of his inauguration, and to the governor’s inauguration festivities.
In April, his inauguration committee gave $700,000 of the money it had raised to the California State Protocol Foundation, which pays for governor travel, including Newsom’s trip to El Salvador that month.
Through behested payments, Newsom steered $880,000 from donors including Hearst and Pepsi-Cola to Best Buddies, a charity that helps people with disabilities.
He’s also used behested payments to fund outside consulting. A higher education nonprofit paid consulting firm McKinsey $600,000 for a study on Fresno education to help the governor’s higher education council. Likewise, the James Irvine Foundation has paid nonprofit think tank Institute for the Future $700,000 to advise the governor’s Future of Work Commission.
The Bee’s Jason Pohl contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "High-profile lawyers gave Gavin Newsom free legal help on death penalty, prison health care."