“Can lawyers who voted for Biden effectively communicate with a client who voted for Trump?”
A BlueSky post starting with that question, from Massachusetts Assistant Bar Counsel David Kluft*, caught my eye this morning.
David’s post highlighted a September 2025 order out of the Eastern District of New York in Toussie v. Williams & Connolly, LLP et al. The case is a legal malpractice matter alleging negligent settlement advice. The plaintiff proffered Professor Ronald J. Colombo as an expert “in the field of legal ethics and the practice of law.” Professor Colombo is, as his title suggests, an academic, but he had some private practice and in-house experience as well.
The linked order decided a Daubert-type motion and excluded Professor Colombo’s testimony on various grounds (including that, as an academic focusing primarily on corporate and securities law, he lacked expertise in legal ethics),
Relevant here, however, is that Professor Colombo opined, among other things, that the law firm’s representation of the plaintiff was deficient because one of their lawyers was a donor to Joe Biden’s campaign per FEC disclosures. The plaintiff had stated his support for Donald Trump (and also “routinely made brash comments and references, and comes from the Long Island real estate industry”). Professor Columbo “mused” that the plaintiff was an “atypical” client of the firm, and the lawyer “experienced a culture clash that prevented him from properly retaining and communicating with Plaintiff as required by the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.”
The court found that that these allegations by the expert were too speculative to be admissible, but also that he “failed to show that researching an individual’s political donations to learn if an attorney has a different political ideology than their client is an accepted or newly innovative method used by legal ethics experts to support a malpractice claim.”
This part of the opinion definitely caught my attention, for what are likely obvious reasons. As far as I know I am the only Wisconsin legal ethics attorney with a significant (and very partisan) elections practice as well (there are a couple who do a lot of one and dabble in the other, though). And I have been asked this question: “Can you represent someone whose political views you abhor?” more than once (albeit not as an expert).
For me, the decision is generally based on the nature of the representation and not the views. I represent all kinds of people in non-political cases, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem (at least not an insurmountable one) with political disagreement or a “culture clash.” (As an aside, don’t we all clash at least a little with a lot of our clients? Anyway.)
There have been times, however, that I have felt it necessary to affirmatively disclose my views and either indicate that I do not believe there is a conflict, or that any potential conflict may be waived with informed consent under SCR 20:1.7(a)(2). I have represented lawyers in grievance proceedings where the underlying matter is their own advocacy for a client or cause I have opposed, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t really matter. I’m looking at whether the Office of Lawyer Regulation can prove they violated any Rules of Professional Conduct.
Now, my elections practice does create additional wrinkles—there may be specific clients I cannot take on, because my duties to my existing partisan clients would make it difficult for me to represent them adequately. (Think election deniers – then again, it would defy logic for someone like Jim Troupis or Mike Gableman to call me.) But that’s a problem specific to me and people like me; other lawyers, of course, may have other “business” type conflicts to navigate.
Finally, about that bit about researching someone’s political donation to determine whether their politics are at odds with those of their clients—no, I do not think it’s an “accepted method used by legal ethics experts,” but I will suggest a caveat. There may be a specific client or representation where that information might be relevant—if there is a suspicion that not only did the lawyer fail to adhere to the standard of care, but their political views led them (consciously or unconsciously) to try to torpedo their client’s case, then perhaps I could see it. If I took on an election denier case and messed it up, it might be reasonable for my client to believe I did it on purpose. But there is nothing in the Toussie case to suggest that this could be anything other than ordinary legal malpractice.
In short—if the political views of a lawyer are important to a client, they can certainly do their research and take their business to someone like-minded, but beyond that? Everything is already partisan, but absent more, it really shouldn’t matter for legal representation.
*If you’re on BlueSky or LinkedIn and interested in legal ethics (as I know you are), David’s a good follow.
