From Courts to Polls: Biglaw Turns Out to Protect the Vote
Dozens of BigLaw firms, including Reed Smith LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, turned out to protect voting rights in the midterm elections by manning voter hotlines on Tuesday and taking charge of high-stakes litigation.
Reed Smith, Troutman Pepper and Blank Rome LLP, for example, are fielding voter calls from Pennsylvania where the U.S. Senate race is tight between Republican candidate Mehmet Oz and Democratic candidate John Fetterman.
Kathy Ochroch, partner and director of pro bono and community impact at Blank Rome, told Law360 Pulse in an interview Tuesday that her firm first partnered with Troutman Pepper to run a nonpartisan election hotline in 2020 for the primary elections.
"The biggest difference between this year and the presidential year is the call volume," Ochroch said. "With the complications of COVID and also with mail-in balloting being very new to Pennsylvania, there was very high call volume [in 2020]." That call volume has eased a bit with the midterm elections.
Still, voters have been calling the hotline about poll locations, long lines and switching from a mail-in ballot to an in-person ballot, according to Ochroch.
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"From Courts to Polls: Biglaw Turns Out to Protect the Vote," by Sarah Martinson was published in Law360 on November 8, 2022.
The firm was also featured in Bloomberg Law in an article mentioning the election hotline. To read the article, please click here.