because of tort cases and rampant radical leftism?

Could it be that most highly educated people agree with Obama, are aghast at Bush's policies, and are afraid that McCain will continue on the same path as Bush?

Let's face it. Most people seem not to like Bush's performance. A main reason they are voting for McCain is that there is an irrational fear of an Obama presidency. Sure, there are those who actually favor McCain's plans for the wars, his vow to appoint justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and his tax policies. And then there are those who think Bush has done a bang-up job. I submit that those people are few and far between.

Somehow when it involves your political opponents, honest differences in policy preferences is never a reasonable explanation.

To answer your question JA, I'm going to vote that lawyers approve of his policy preferences.

Plus, as Allan points out, smart eddicated people agree that Obama is smart and eddicated. Therefore, they donate to Obama.

Tareeq

I liked your post so much that I accidentally stabbed my uvula with a fountain pen. Again.

Uh, as a partner in one of these "major law firms" I think everyone's overthinking this A LOT. Barack Obama has 500+ HLS classmates, as well as people before and after him. He was clearly high profile, as he was elected president of HLR. Further, he taught for several years at the U of C and was both popular and engaged with students there, maintaining a lot of those relationships. I have many colleagues who know him. I knew him casually way back when. By any reasonable measure, we all make a lot of money.

In short, it's the network. Go to Harvard and teach at Chicago and you will meet and befriend a lot of lawyers. Those lawyers tend to know other lawyers. You fundraise from your friends. Not complicated.

It's not the network... they all donated to Kerry too.

Self-interest is a very simple explanation, although I am not sure how much weight that holds — keep in mind that Obama's tax plans would harm Biglaw salaries (as ATL demonstrates). And thus works directly against individual interests. While the changes in tax law may or may not usher in another "golden age of litigation", they will certainly and immediately harm the finances of individuals.

Other explanations:

1. Obama is a lawyer and thus other lawyers believe he will further the interests of lawyers or they are narcissistic and want to see a lawyer elected to office. He also has a lawyer as a VP. As lawyers spend a significant amount of time advising clients who may or may not listen to their advice, electing a lawyer as president is essentially the fulfillment of a wish to "steer the boat".

2. Trojan Horse. So many lawyers have invested in Obama already that he will be forced to recognize lawyers as a critical constituancy, in short, every donation further obligates Obama to lawyers. His VP choice may reflect this. The more lawyers donate the more likely they are going to be considered as stakeholders and so the more they will be represented when it comes time to push policy.

3. Bias in Law. Perhaps the practice of law itself has a bias which promotes support of Obama's policies (or rather, perceived policies). As attorneys are increasingly exposed to the areas where the system does not work and problems do not resolve themselves, the desire for reform of anykind becomes more and more appealing. Alternatively, it may be a result of cynicism or desensitivity after overexposure to systemic failure and continuously witnessing cases.

4. Bandwagon effect. All the other law firms are doing it. Might as well invest more than the others and get knocked up to the top spot when stories are running about it.

5. Demographics. Perhaps this is all due to a lurking variable and lawyers just happen to all be in the same demographic as that lurking variable.

That pretty much sums up all my ideas on the topic that have any sort of rational basis.

The stuff about Obama being a lawyer/former law professor is bogus. Lawyers, including biglaw lawyers, have been disproportionately Democratic for quite some time. There's nothing new here.

Big law firms represent big clients. Big clients want lawyers with access to people in power in DC. So big law firms buy access for their clients.

Barista's numbers are 'to date' -- and the candidate that everyone originally expected to win, Hillary Clinton, raked in 18 million from these lawyers. The fact that Obama has a "mere" 22 million suggests that he's been playing catch-up, and finally caught up. (it would be interesting to see the 2007 data alone).

People who work at big firms tend to be enormously arrogant pricks. Like most arrogant pricks, they think the common man is a moron, and needs to be led around by the nose "for their own good." They assume they are right on everything, and everyone who disagrees with them is either stupid and/or evil. There is no possibility of legitimate rational disagreement with the messiah! Allan's post is a prime example of this thinking.

For people of this mindset, collectivism/statism is the preferred form of government. So they will of course support the most openly collectivist candidate in recent memory.

Plus, they abhor guns in the hands of the commoner (although not quite to the degree of the AMA), so they absolutely despise Sarah Palin.

People who work at big firms tend to be enormously arrogant pricks. Like most arrogant pricks, they think the common man is a moron, and needs to be led around by the nose "for their own good." They assume they are right on everything, and everyone who disagrees with them is either stupid and/or evil.

Whereas you, on the other hand, carefully consider arguments on their merits, give everyone the benefit of the doubt and never rush to attribute policy differences to bad faith on the part of people who disagree with you.

As one of the Big Law a$$holes, I vote self-interest here. More Dems, mean more laws, mean more regulation for business mean more money for lawyers. They'd rather pay Obama's higher tax rate on $2 million than McCain's lower tax rate on $1.3 million.

A Democratic administration produces a 53% increase in biglaw compensation? Color me skeptical.

I'd guess that what's in the financial interest of biglaw is less a Democratic administration than having the President and the Congress be of the same party. Republicans don't produce less regulation so much as different (more pro-business) regulation. The GOP talks the talk on free markets but they don't walk the walk.

I think most of the explanation is that the sort of people who are inclined to go to law school in the first place are more likely to be Democrats. Biglaw attorneys included.

Didn't Obama relinquish public financing and thus he is forced to fund raise heavily from every element of the public? Obviously he took the bet because he thought he would win, but won't this mean that he is likely to raise more money from almost every demographic group, whereas McCain is focusing his energies on tasks other than fund raising, because he has public money?

Urban area + graduate degree = (most likely a) democrat

I think that lawyers tend to see the world in terms of the law, and see social problems as essentially legal problems. Thus problems in education are solved through laws mandating, e.g., special ed.; racial disparities are addressed through anti-discrimination laws, etc., etc.

Lawyers believe in regulation, and also profit from it. A lot of what biglaw does has to do with regulatory matters. Their worldview is compatible with the essential Democratic perspective that government can solve all social ills.

Although as a functional matter Republicans elected to office also seem to take this tack, it is not the essential Republican perspective. This resistance (theoretical though it may be) to government/legal responses to every possible issue is at odds with how, these days, lawyers think.

Well, there pipeline to law firms - big, small, urban, rural - is largely liberal. On the whole, law students are liberal, law profs are liberal, and lawyers are liberal.

I do think some of it has to do with the idea of wealth making v. wealth transfer. Few attorneys seem to care whether they are cutting up preexisting pie, or helping to generate more pie; few people to law school asking where their salaries will be coming from.

This thread is utterly amazing. Virtually everyone, including JA, thinks that lawyers' donations to political campaigns are some sort of strange phenomenon that need to be"explained."

Yet we have not one iota of data that suggests that these lawyers differ in their political contributions from other, similar, individuals.

In other words, we have no reason to believe that there is anything to explain. Yet everyone jumps in with their favorite hobbyhorses.

On the assumption that most commenters are lawyers, I have to ask what they teach in law school.

Lawyers, like teachers, vote Democratic because that is who feeds them.

"Could it be that most highly educated people agree with Obama..."

Since when are lawyers considered highly educated? Then spend many years in school, but studying a very narrow subject.

One can argue that teachers are "fed" by the Democrats because the teachers' unions have a very strong connection to the Democratic party, but I'm not sure how the Dems "feed" Biglaw. I'm pretty sure that private corporations feed Biglaw.

People with seven years of higher education are generally considered highly educated no matter how narrow the subject matter, and the law is actually a very broad subject. Think about it: the Biglaw guy doing mergers &acquisitions, the tax guy helping you through your audit, the public defender arguing about illegal searches &seizures in a drug case, the legal aid guy working in landlord-tenant court, the JAG officer working with the military code, the estates guy writing up your will...the law is a ridiculously broad subject, actually. Ask anyone who's taken the bar exam.

Less fruitful than picking your toes and a lot less fun

It's for the same reason academia goes liberal. Because the conservative persecution complex myth is a big lie - instead, a VERY high percentage of the top law school students (who go on to become biglaw associates, partners, and law professors) are democrats that range from centrist to liberal.

First of all, at big firms, there is a definite hierarchy. At the top, we find litigators. At the bottom, we find patent attorneys. Now, the attorneys in between are the transactional types

Really? I never understood it to be that way.

Lawyers, like other businessmen, like to back winners. The founder of my firm was one of the Rangers for Bush. I know very liberal partners who were strong armed to donate to the Bush campaign. This year, the push was for money to Obama.

My understanding of big law is that the top eschelon is made up of transactional lawyers. Sure, they have good litigators, but litigators create conflicts with potential clients. Most high power litigators I am aware of are in boutique firms, where they can sue anyone without costing the firm transactional work.

Bad laws are bad for business. Most lawyers oppose bad laws even if they would help the legal business. However, we don't cry in our beer about bad laws, because they may help our pocketbooks.

In my opinion, Batista basically has it right; it's a combination of preferences and self-interest. On the self-interest point, more laws means more suits means more attorneys billings means more money in the pockets of partners, even if they have to pay higher taxes (though I wonder if Obama had been wedded to a completely uncapped, full social security tax what the donations would look like). This is true for both litigation and transactional -- for the latter, more laws mean more due diligence and opinions that need to be written, as well as more areas to research to make sure the agreement or one of the parties aren't running afoul of the law.

And then on preferences I basically agree with Ak Mike. I remember from college one of my liberal professors was counseling an equally liberal student not to go to law school. The professor's argument was that law school narrows your perspective so that you see all problems in terms of how can they be solved by laws, rather than thinking outside the box. This carries over to a lot of attorneys so that, on average, when they see a problem they're more likely to think of solving it through additional laws than some other means.

Could this be parody? Is Allan doing an unsubtle satire of how conservatives think that liberals think, a la The New Yorker? I hope so.

I love how the "subtle parody" gets mocked, but the blatant "Liberals support Obama because they're all elitist assholes that think they're better than us." Argument passes untouched.

Could it be that most highly educated people agree with Obama, are aghast at Bush's policies, and are afraid that McCain will continue on the same path as Bush?

I would say that's highly plausible.

Allan pushes the conceit of the higher intelligence of Dems. after all, we know that Kerry was a man of vast intelligence, at least until we learned that his grades were worse than George Bush's were.

ejo, please note that Allan's post says nothing about Dems at all.

Whereas you, on the other hand, carefully consider arguments on their merits, give everyone the benefit of the doubt and never rush to attribute policy differences to bad faith on the part of people who disagree with you.

Cornellian,
I rarely attribute bad faith to people who disagree with me. Nor do I assume they are stupid. For example, Obama is not stupid, and he honestly believes, in good faith, that a collectivist approach is good. Calling someone an "arrogant prick" who thinks the common man is a moron - as I do of big law firm people and Obama - says NOTHING about the "good faith" or "intelligence" of those people. What orifice did you pull that theory out of? (BTW, this post is actually one that qualifies as being arrogantly dismissive of your position)

But thanks for completely ignoring my theory, and throwing up a blindingly off target tu quoque attack!

Mel, Obama may be many things, but "accomplished lawyer" is not one of them.

According to OpenSecrets.org, in 2004, John Kerry received $22.5 million from lawyers and law firms. George W. Bush received $11.5 million.

Figures for 2000 are not yet available.

The post has now been updated with total lawyer and law firm donations back to 1992. They overwhelmingly favor Democrats by about 70% to 30%. That's a pretty strong bias over 25 years.

But this topic is about donations from BigLaw, so you'd have to back out from those numbers the donations from "trial lawyers" -- the inaccurate public moniker referring to the plaintiffs' bar.