Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice

The legal industry has sold its soul to deep-pocketed corporations and polarizing politicians, according to this impassioned indictment of international law firm Jones Day and its peers. New York Times reporter Enrich (Dark Towers) deplores Jones Day’s role in defeating lawsuits against tobacco company R.J. Reynolds and defending Abbott Laboratories from a claim that bacterial contamination in its Similac infant formula caused meningitis and brain damage in a newborn. He also rehashes the firm’s entanglement with Donald Trump: Jones Day alumnus Don McGahn became Trump’s White House counsel, vetting all judicial appointments; other alumni in the Justice Department tried to quash federal investigations into the opioid-selling practices of Jones Day client Walmart; and the firm represented Trump in lawsuits to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Enrich’s history of Jones Day probes the corrosion of ethics after the advent of law firm ads in the 1970s touched off a spiral of money-grubbing, and sketches engrossing vignettes of the predatory culture that resulted. Enrich’s condemnations of corporations and their lawyers aren’t always ironclad—he brushes aside testing results that found no contamination in Abbott’s formula—but he delivers a vivid, crackling account of the law at its most bullying. Readers will be outraged. Agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Sept.)