RIVERA CALLS FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND COMPETIVE BIDDING IN OUTSOURCING LEGAL WORK
Questions About Multimillion Dollar Contingency Fee Agreements
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Manuel Rivera, candidate for D.C. Attorney General, today called for greater transparency in awarding contracts to private law firms. Rivera said the District should closely monitor how outside law firms are selected to avoid the slightest appearance of political favoritism and should favor having salaried OAG attorneys handle the litigation inhouse, rather than contracting a private law firm. Rivera criticizes the process used by AOG to award multiple contingency-fee contracts to Edelson PC. who employs Jimmy Rock, a former Assistant Deputy Attorney General. Attorney Rock is employed at Edelson PC as a managing partner of its Washington, D.C. office, which was opened shortly after he left office. Although OAG initially retained Edelson for the Google lawsuit in 2022, before Brian Schwalb became Attorney General, the story does not end there. In less than a month after Schwalb took office in January 2023, his administration submitted the multiyear contingency-fee agreement with Edelson PC for approval. The agreement allowed Edelson to receive a percentage of the District’s net monetary recovery, plus reimbursable costs. “These were substantial high legal fees involved here, and District residents deserve complete transparency,” Rivera said. “The issue should not be where someone previously worked. The issue should be whether the District received the best legal representation at the best value and whether the process used to select outside counsel was fair, transparent, and competitive.” Rivera emphasized that the fact that a private law firm employs a former OAG official does not, standing alone, establish wrongdoing. But, he said, that substantial government contracts involving firms employing former senior officials demonstrate “the importance of strong safeguards against actual or apparent conflicts of interest.” “When a former senior official leaves government and subsequently works for a private firm doing substantial business with the office where that official previously served, the public has a legitimate interest in knowing how the firm was selected, whether other firms were considered, and whether the former official previously participated in the same or substantially related cases,” Rivera said. “Here, the relationship between Schwalb, Attorney Rock, and Edelson PC, a generous donor to the democratic party is enough to raise some serious concerns.” Rivera added. Rivera said that, if elected, he would support a competitive bidding system for AOG contingency fees contracts and a transparent process for outside legal services retention under applicable procurement law. He would also advocate for legislation establishing an appropriate post-government cooling-off period of five years applicable to outside legal-services arrangements involving former senior OAG officials and their employers. “Public contracts should be awarded because a firm provides the qualifications, expertise, and value that the District needs,” Rivera said. “The public should be able to know.” “The issue is not that every Attorney General around the country outsource legal work, the issue is the process by which these private law firms are selected, to preserve the integrity of that process” Rivera explained.