In-House Lawyer Claims Title Insurer Axed Him Over Pro Bono Help

Clayton Jackson said he thought he was just giving some pro bono advice to neighbors who worried that they may be deported.

Yet after the former Big Law litigator talked publicly about the incident—and how the Trump administration’s crackdown might affect some of his company’s clients—he wound up getting fired by title insurer Fidelity National Financial Inc.

The in-house lawyer now finds himself in the middle of a national debate over immigration enforcement. “You hope the leopard isn’t going to eat your face, and then it does,” Jackson said in an interview Monday about his situation.

Jackson said he was acting in his personal capacity in providing pro bono assistance—but not counsel—to an immigrant family in his Dallas suburb about their right to counsel if they were deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Shortly after, in March, two ICE agents showed up at his house and accused him of obstructing an ongoing investigation, Jackson said. He noted the family wasn’t a Fidelity National client.

Jackson first spoke about the incident publicly with Radley Balko, a former Washington Post journalist who described what occurred in a Substack column that was also published April 23 at Slate.com. That same day, Jackson was fired.

ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment. Fidelity declined to discuss why Jackson was fired but acknowledged he no longer works for the company.

“That was not the reason for termination,” Fidelity’s chief legal officer Peter Sadowski said by email Monday when asked if Jackson was fired for speaking with the press about his pro bono plight. “I can’t comment further, given that this is an ongoing employment matter at the company,” Sadowski added.

Fidelity National’s billionaire chairman, William Foley II, who owns the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, wineries, and other notable assets, has been a prominent donor to Republican political causes in recent years.

Fateful Decision

Jackson, a former litigation associate at Bass, Berry & Sims in Memphis, relocated to Plano, Texas, after he joined Fidelity National as a trial and appellate counsel in 2023.

He said his job with Fidelity National was unique in that unlike most in-house lawyers he also represented individual clients, much like he did while in private practice. Those clients could be people who bought title insurance and due to some dispute or claim have Jackson named as their lawyer. Having an in-house lawyer handle the matter is more efficient for Fidelity National, which avoids having to hire outside counsel for such cases, Jackson said.

Jackson said several clients expressed to him their “concern about things in the immigration context.” He said he never provided immigration counsel to any Fidelity National-insured client, but was willing to help them find pro bono resources in that arena.

Given that ICE agents had visited his home and that he was the public counsel of record to certain individual clients, Jackson said he informed Fidelity National that he was concerned about remaining in the Lone Star State—a front line in the battle over illegal immigration—and formally requested a transfer to its office in Chicago, where he has family.

The company, he said, declined to offer him a position in Chicago.

Moving Forward

After he made his office transfer request, Jackson said his supervisors at Fidelity National told him that company policy bars its lawyers from providing legal advice outside the scope of coverage for a client.

For weeks, Jackson said, he was unsure of where he would work or whom he would report to at the company. On April 23, Balko’s story went live—Fidelity National wasn’t mentioned in it—and Jackson soon found his access restricted to his work email and other programs. A courier arrived that afternoon with his termination letter, he said, which described his firing for “unsatisfactory performance and violations of company policy” with no further explanation.

“That’s how I got to here,” said Jackson, who posted Monday to Substack about his ordeal. Jackson, who also once clerked for a federal district judge, said his faith in the legal profession has been shaken.

“It was a job I wanted to retire from, it was a unicorn position,” Jackson said about his nearly two years at Fidelity National: “In most in-house litigation roles, you’re just managing other lawyers by hiring external counsel. I was actually going to court, taking cases to trial, and arguing appeals.”

Jackson said he’s hired Kenneth White, a litigator with Los Angeles-based Brown White & Osborn, to represent him on a pro bono basis on First Amendment grounds. He’s also paid a retainer to Ellwanger Henderson, a civil rights and employment firm in Texas, to advise on his separation from Fidelity National.

Jackson offered a warning for in-house lawyers and his former Big Law brethren who may want to keep their heads down to avoid confronting what he perceives as legal excesses by the White House.

“The only thing that matters in the Fortune 500 world is the stock price and in Big Law it’s profits per partner,” he said. “It’s nice to have two lake houses and a ski cabin in Aspen. But at a certain point we’re lawyers and we have an ethical duty to help people that need it.”