Further indication that university leaders are paying astronomical sums for useless advice on these situations.
"How Public School Leaders Upstaged Republicans and the Ivy League"
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/u...
Yes, and largely for the same reason that university presidents are poorly positioned to handle these hearings: both the lawyers and the presidents work and interact in social circles that are very sympathetic to the GOP and therefore are predisposed to placating or accommodating them.
The same risk-averse just-pay-me types that tell already nervous university nellies like our own President Hartzell to preemptively surrender on DEI and call everybody in the cop Rolodex for a relatively innocuous protest.
You don't get large institutions to pay you millions of dollars over and over again for truly marginal provision of services by sticking a finger in the eye of the powerful.
One might even go so far as to say that Big Law lawyers are poorly positioned to give advice in many moments, on many topics? Like a good solo defense attorney would have given better advice and prep. I'm certainly biased, only lasted 2 yrs in the Big Law thing.
The big D.C. firms used to (and still do) have lawyers who are very skilled at the public-facing aspects of legislative politics, but it seems they're pushing folks with, at best, marginal qualifications into the role, and it shows...
You hit on the point. You hire Holland to protect you and the company you're CEO of before (unknown) Subcommittee. To go before Gym Jordan or Comer or any of the other clowns, Holland et.al. would mislead you.
Universities that receive a bunch of money from federal grants have every incentive to avoid pissing off Congress. I don’t think intentional combativeness—the politically satisfying approach—is going to be the right approach for most who may end up summoned by these people.
I’d guess most people who would *try* to be combative would fail miserably at coming off well. I’m also not sure combative is how I’d describe the main feature that made testimony yesterday effective though
Federal grants are awarded through the executive branch. Earmarks were eliminated years ago, so it's individuals and programs that submit applications. Therefore, irritating (or praising) any given congress critter will have very little effect.
I’m generally aware of the grant process. Earmarks have been back awhile now. And I know from secondhand experience that MoC do play a role in getting funding to big publics
Yep. Big law testimony prep is great for technical issues with a political angle. Half the room doesn't care and/or can't follow. Standard tactics - defuse with boredom, offer hollow concessions, stick to talking points - work. Not a good approach for a purely political hearing!
Depends what the client's goal is. If the goal is to just "get through" testifying without incident, then maybe keeping a lower profile makes sense. But if that's not your goal, and instead you want to try to honestly engage with the faux lawmaking process, then yes that's bad advice.
I don't mean it that way. They are certainly small-c conservative though, any institution with a planning horizon longer than 5-10 years inevitably trends towards protecting vested interests first.
I'm picking on this law firm, which might offer different advice about tactics for testifying to GOP-controlled congressional committees if it was not also counsel for the RNC
University leaders don't need legal advice (yet), which is all most lawyers can give. They need advice from those who've weathered protests, and PR advice both because they're losing the PR battle, and in case the advice from experienced people goes bad... but why would...
As someone observed, this is a group of professionals who spend no small part of their days dealing with irrational cranks (Moms for Liberty anyone?) and ill-informed politicians. The Republicans didn't realize they were inviting a bunch of gunslingers to their knife fight.
