The Link Between Trial Lawyers & State AGs

Personal-injury lawyers, collectively, are among the biggest of big businesses, so much so that we at the Manhattan Institute have dubbed them “Trial Lawyers, Inc.”[1] It’s no secret that this group of attorneys is a powerful political force, exerting pressure on legislators and elected judges alike.[2] Few realize, however, just how in bed the litigation industry is with the very officials we entrust to enforce the law itself—the attorneys general of the various states. In fact, our state attorneys general have become not just allies of the trial bar but, in many cases, indispensable to developing Trial Lawyers, Inc.’s new lines of business. State AGs make possible the payment of windfall fees to their allies in the plaintiffs’ bar, whose lawyers in turn gratefully fill the officials’ campaign coffers with a share of their easily obtained cash. This report tells the story of the questionable bargain between the trial bar and the states’ top law-enforcement officers.