Kirkland’s Houston Bankrupt Gig is a Problem

Many of the elite Am Law 100 law firms are snickering now that Mother Elephant among them, Kirkland & Ellis, was caught helping put one judge’s hands in his mistress’ panties & making Houston’s bankruptcy court No. 1 too.

Not that other powerful law firms don’t pull every trick in the book to get & keep lucrative client gigs. But, this Kirkland story may take the cake. As the WSJ story noted: “An unsigned … bombshell of a letter … threatened havoc for the … world’s largest law firm by revenue … and others that did business before the most powerful bankruptcy judge in the U.S. The letter alleged that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, chief of the bankruptcy court in Houston, was in a romantic relationship with Elizabeth Freeman, a Texas attorney who as Kirkland’s co-counsel helped the firm shepherd multibillion-dollar cases in Jones’s courtroom.” The long story short is that this “intimate relationship” was the key for Freeman & her law firm, Jackson Walker, to repeatedly be brought in to represent large companies so as to get a “favorable judge” whom Kirkland could count on to make the right calls.

Not only is this conflict-of-interest accusation threatening Houston’s bankruptcy court’s “top tier” status, but will likely taint “judgements affecting hundreds of thousands of employees, investor, vendors” & so on. Of course, the whistleblower’s letter may prove to be bankrupt of the truth. Kirkland itself says it didn’t know about the romantic linkage until recently. But, then, how’s Kirkland going to explain how it got way more many billion dollar cases than its nearest rival in Jones’ courtroom? Houston, “We have a problem,” you think?

Davd Soul