Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) is pushing to be one of the nation’s most aggressive GOP top cops. And he’s leaning on outside counsel, including a firm founded by a Democratic megadonor, to launch suits against tech giants and corporate titans.
Roughly every month since Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) tapped his chief of staff Uthmeier, Florida has announced another big mark.
“We are going to swing big. We are going to fight the right fights,” Uthmeier said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. “We’re more aggressive now than we’ve ever been, but it also does require outside counsel assistance.”
The 400-attorney office is relying especially on Boies Schiller, the firm whose founder, David Boies, is best known in Florida for his representation of Al Gore’s campaign in the 2000 presidential election recount.
Since then the firm has built a strong relationship with Republican officials and hired some former state government lawyers to build out a team taking on high-profile litigation for the state.
“DeSantis and Uthmeier represent a more robust forward-leaning brand of conservatism and policy making,” said Jesse Panuccio, a partner at Boies Schiller’s Fort Lauderdale office. He was former associate attorney general in Trump’s first administration and general counsel for US Sen. Rick Scott (R) when he was governor.
“What comes with that are court challenges—as the policy is more ambitious you get more lawsuits,” he said.
The big swings Uthmeier is taking, and with whom he’s teaming up, could be a factor in next year’s Florida attorney general election.
Democratic candidate José Javier Rodríguez said Uthmeier isn’t transparent enough on how the state is awarding these contracts.
“The attorney general has said only his friends and only the people who agree with him on DEI can serve the people of Florida,” said Rodríguez, a former state senator. “The appearance of conflict, whether it looks like these contracts are being handed out to friends, is important.”
Courting Controversy
Controversy has followed Uthmeier in the nine months since he took office.
He’s been a driving force behind the Everglades migrant detention center called Alligator Alcatraz, and a federal judge sanctioned him for telling local law enforcement they’re free to enforce state crimes for migrants after the federal court blocked him from enforcing the law. Boies Schiller is helping Florida defend both cases.
Uthmeier’s office is full steam ahead, collecting roughly $200 million in the last six months from settlements, judgments, and fines. Offensive maneuvers include investigating companies that work on ESG ratings, and launching a first-in-the nation office helping parents fight school systems which “seek to ‘treat,’ indoctrinate, or collect data from students without parental involvement.” He’s also blocked all government contracts for law firms that participate in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
His work has received attention from one Florida denizen in particular: President Donald Trump, who in an Oct. 8 Truth Social post endorsed him in the 2026 race.
“The office has never been more productive and we’ve never had more ongoing cases,” said Uthmeier, who replaced Ashley Moody (R) after she was appointed to the US Senate.
‘Mission Aligned’
Tackling his agenda takes more lawyers than Uthmeier has among his ranks.
State lawmakers axed roughly 7% of his office’s budget, and Uthmeier is petitioning the Florida Supreme Court to let out-of-state attorneys represent Florida without taking the bar for three years in an effort to fill dozens of his office’s vacant positions.
To fill the gaps Uthmeier has turned to old friends, like Charles J. Cooper, the founder of Cooper & Kirk, one of Washington’s premier boutiques.
They met when Uthmeier was attending Georgetown Law and invited Cooper to receive a Federalist Society award. This year Cooper—whose firm is a longtime fixture representing conservatives—served on Uthmeier’s transition team and his firm is representing Florida in a case accusing Snapchat of allegedly addicting children to its app. The firm is taking the Snap case on contingency, per a contract obtained by Bloomberg Law.
Uthmeier “has put the attorney general’s aggressiveness on steroids,” said Cooper, especially when it comes to “pursuing the kind of family-friendly, child-protective conservative polices” where they’re “mission aligned.”
‘Bottomless Bench’
Uthmeier, who approves all outside counsel contracts for state agencies, said many of the firms working for the state are taking “low bono” reduced rates or working on contingency contracts to preserve taxpayer cash.
Recent contracts show Cooper & Kirk charging Florida around $700 per hour depending on the case. A recent contract with Boies Schiller showed the firm charged the state $875 per hour for partner work and $625 for associates.
Legal bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars are fairly common as high profile litigation pits the Sunshine State against entertainment, financial, and social media giants. With DeSantis and Uthmeir pushing policy and litigation priorites, Florida will continue to find itself in courtfacing major companies, and major law firms will continue raking in fees for outside work.
“As state AGs take on the biggest companies in the world, which have unlimited defense budgets and a bottomless bench of Big Law lawyers, the need for assistance from similarly resourced firms on the state side may increase,” Panuccio said.
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