DNC Work Favors Big Law After Split With Longtime Adviser Elias

The Democratic National Committee is parceling work to law firms—without a clear lead outside legal adviser—after cutting ties with prominent elections lawyer Marc Elias.

WilmerHale and Covington & Burling, two firms with big practices in Washington, are among those getting work from the DNC this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Perkins Coie, which has dialed back much of its consulting for Democrats since Elias’s 2021 exit, still provides legal work for the committee, filings show.

Perkins Coie maintains a political law practice, which is now largely focused on advising corporations’ political acitivity. WilmerHale has for years represented the DNC in litigation. Covington partner Robert Lenhard previously served as outside counsel to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

The split with Elias, the Washington-based lawyer who is a lead adviser to several Democratic committees and campaigns, marked a shift in the DNC’s legal strategy ahead of the 2024 election. The DNC worked with Elias for more than a decade when he was the leader of the political law practice at Perkins Coie and after he started the Elias Law Group with colleagues from the Big Law firm.

The DNC and Elias Law Group declined to comment on the reasons for the split. PunchBowl News reported in April that strategic disagreements led to the separation.

It’s not clear that any law firm has taken on the role as the DNC’s primary outside firm. DNC spokesman Ammar Moussa pointed to a statement from April that said the committee “works with a number of law firms on voting rights litigation, compliance, contracting and more.”

Following the split, the DNC appointed an in-house counsel, Andrea Levien, who worked with Elias both at Perkins Coie and his new firm. She began a role “managing the DNC’s legal affairs” in May, according to her LinkedIn profile. She did not respond to a request for comment.

“A national party committee can be a large and complicated client for any law firm, and that’s because there are many moving parts across the country that are not always legally in sync with each other,” said Craig Engle, ArentFox Schiff’s political law leader. Independent groups’ interests may also not align with the national party, he added, which can sometimes lead to conflicts.

Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Covington’s Lenhard declined to comment.

Elias took the reins of Perkins Coie’s political law group in 2009 after Bob Bauer, who was President Barack Obama’s top campaign lawyer, joined the White House. Elias helped the firm become a go-to shop for a swath of Democratic entities, including Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, in the succeeding decade.

During the 2020 election, a cycle that saw an unprecedented amount of court fights over voting laws, Perkins Coie earned $11.2 million from the DNC, according to FEC filings. The total represented almost 65% of the DNC’s expenditures for legal services, the filings show.

Elias left Perkins Coie in September 2021 to launch his own firm, which worked as a top legal adviser for the DNC until this year. He continues to take a lead role in representing Democrats in campaigns and voting rights litigation. The lawyer’s team is litigating 45 “pro-democracy cases” in 18 US states, he said on Twitter in April.

“Elias’s strategies have been controversial in terms of both the cases he has pursued and his public profile on social media and elsewhere,” said Richard Hasen, the political science director at UCLA School of Law. Elias has an outspoken presence on Twitter, where he has nearly 800,000 followers.

The DNC has this year paid the Elias Law Group $600,923 for legal services, according to FEC records through July, demonstrating the firm continues to work on matters for the committee as it winds down the relationship.

The committee has, meanwhile, paid WilmerHale $312,287 and Perkins Coie $310,724. Covington, which according to FEC records had not worked as an outside adviser for the DNC before 2021, has taken in about $43,465 for its work with the committee this year. The law firm, now home to Biden’s first White House counsel, Dana Remus, continues to work with Biden’s presidential campaign, which paid it $156,655 from January to July.

FEC filings also show the committee is working with Dentons, which defended Pennsylvania Democrats against GOP challenges over the state’s results of the 2020 election. The firm’s former global chairman Joe Andrew, who stepped down in November, chaired the DNC from 1991 to 2001.

Boston-based Hemenway & Barnes, which has worked with the Biden campaign, is another top-earning firm from the DNC this cycle.