On the evening of March 20, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Boutrous found himself in an exclusive seaside neighborhood of Los Angeles at the confluence of Hollywood and presidential politics.

As top donors to the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, Boutrous and his wife, Helen, were co-hosting a fundraiser at the home of the acclaimed film director J.J. Abrams. Among their fellow co-hosts were Shonda Rhimes, the producer of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” and Matt Johnson, a prominent entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles who is moonlighting as the treasurer of the Harris campaign.

That night, addressing a crowd in Abrams’ backyard in the Pacific Palisades, Harris emphasized “the need to restore the values of our country,” Boutrous said. “And one theme was the rule of law.”

Harris has pitched herself to voters and donors as a lawyer-for-the-people, a former prosecutor “who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years.”

But she has leaned on her legal background for more than just stump speech material. Harris has tapped into the legal community for campaign dollars, raising nearly $675,000 from the leading firms in the U.S., a haul rivaled only by Joe Biden.

Between his campaign launch in April and the end of June, Biden, the former vice president and the leading candidate in national polls, raised $575,000 from the 2019 Am Law 100, an annual ranking of firms based on gross revenue. Biden’s haul was about $100,000 less than what Harris pulled in during the first six months of the year, according to a National Law Journal review of campaign contributions.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg brought in more than $450,000 in the first half of the year from those same 100 law firms. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts raised about $125,000 from top law firms, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pulled in more than $30,000.

Harris has drawn heavily from a California network that, in the past decade, widened across the state as she ascended from San Francisco district attorney to attorney general and, then, to the U.S. Senate.

Her family has also helped. On the fundraising circuit, Harris is often accompanied by her husband, Doug Emhoff, a partner in the Los Angeles office of DLA Piper. Emhoff has personally recruited friends and colleagues from the legal community to host fundraisers and contribute to the presidential campaign.

“Her husband, a good friend of mine, is a highly regarded Big Law partner in L.A. So he’s got a good network of his own,” said Daniel Shallman, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Covington & Burling.

Harris and Emhoff Sen. Kamala Harris and her husband DLA Piper partner Douglas Emhoff, with her niece, during an event to launch Harris’ presidential campaign in Oakland, California, on Jan. 27. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg.

“What it comes down to for me is that we have a lawless president who, in my view, has no respect for the Constitution, no respect for the rule of law, and no respect for the independence of the Justice Department. And he fears two things more than anything: a strong woman and a tough prosecutor,” Shallman added. “Kamala Harris is both.”

Outside of California, Harris has found financial support in the well-heeled Washington and New York legal markets.

Her backers include Obama-era Justice Department veterans such as Ronald Machen, who served from 2010 to 2015 as U.S. attorney in Washington. Machen, now a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, contributed $2,800 to the Harris campaign in March.

Harris also received contributions from law firm partners who worked closely with her sister Maya’s husband, Tony West, a former Obama-era associate U.S. attorney general who is now Uber’s general counsel. Jenner & Block partner Thomas Perrelli, who preceded West in the Justice Department’s third-ranking role, donated $2,800 to Harris in February. West’s successor, Stuart Delery, now a Gibson Dunn partner in Washington, gave $1,000 to Harris in March.

Federal campaign contribution records show that some of Harris’ Big Law donors in New York work at firms such as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Boies Schiller Flexner; Latham & Watkins; DLA Piper; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Sullivan & Cromwell; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Atlanta-based attorneys at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz; Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner; Alston & Bird; and Greenberg Traurig have contributed to the Harris campaign, campaign contribution records show. In Philadelphia, attorneys from such firms as Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Ballard Spahr also have donated to her campaign.

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Big Law Partners Donating to Many Candidates

The first primaries are months away, and campaign records show that many Big Law donors are spending their cash across the candidate field. “About one in five donors have given to two or more Democratic presidential candidates so far this year,” according to a new report at the statistical analysis publication FiveThirtyEight.

Delery of Gibson Dunn contributed $2,800 to the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in May, two months after making a smaller donation to Harris.

Jamie Gorelick, a Wilmer partner who served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, has contributed to the campaigns of Bennet, Biden and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat. Although Gorelick has contributed to those three campaigns, she said she is advising and actively fundraising for Bennet, a former Wilmer associate who was one of her top aides at the Justice Department.

Jamie Gorelick Jamie Gorelick, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM

“He is principled, smart and passionate about the issues that concern me: justice, the courts, our environmental challenges, immigration and health care. He helped turn Colorado from red to blue, so I know that he would be effective in achieving what has to be our first goal—electing a Democratic president,” Gorelick said in an interview.

Jenner & Block’s Ian Gershengorn, another former Obama-era Justice Department alum, has donated to Bennet’s campaign, as have attorneys from such firms as Latham; Boies Schiller; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Cleary Gottlieb; Steptoe & Johnson LLP; and Davis Polk. Bennet has brought in more than $100,000 from top-earning law firms, according to campaign disclosures.

At Paul Weiss, the firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, hosted a reception for Biden and a “lawyer’s lunch” for Harris on the same day last month, the New York Times reported.

Karp has donated this year to the campaigns of Biden, Klobuchar, Harris and U.S. Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, according to campaign finance disclosures. Klobuchar has raised about $375,000 from attorneys at the 100 top U.S. law firms by gross revenue, and Gillibrand has pulled in about $490,000. Booker has brought in more than $400,000 from Big Law attorneys, according to the NLJ’s review of campaign disclosures.

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‘On Being Lawyers, Doing the Right Thing’

Before stopping at Abrams’ house that March evening, Harris and Emhoff appeared at a steakhouse at a Century City mall for a fundraiser hosted by members of the Los Angeles legal community, including Shallman and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld partner Marissa Román Griffith, along with DLA Piper partners Robbin Itkin and Holly Lake.

In the crowd were friends and colleagues, many of whom had met Harris through Emhoff. Others had first encountered Harris in her capacity as San Francisco’s district attorney or California’s attorney general. One of the co-hosts, O’Melveny & Myers partner Daniel Suvor in Los Angeles, had been one of the Harris’ top aides during her tenure as state attorney general.

Another co-host, David Lash, met Harris about five years ago when she came to Southern California to rally lawyers to represent unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S. border from Central America. In an interview, Lash, managing counsel for pro bono and public interest services at O’Melveny, recalled Harris urging the lawyers to put aside any personal reservations they had about U.S. immigration policy and come to the children’s defense.

“I just thought that was a phenomenal speech to give. It was completely nonpartisan. It was just based on being lawyers, doing the right thing, following the law and doing the right thing for these traumatized children. So that sold me on her,” Lash said. A couple years later, Emhoff asked Lash and other friends to co-host a fundraiser for Harris’ Senate run. Lash held the event at his house.

In March, over lamb chops and wine, the crowd at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in Century City heard Harris deliver remarks.

Alex Weingarten, a Los Angeles-based Venable partner and co-host of the fundraiser, recalled there was “a healthy amount of the standard stump speech.” But Harris geared a portion of her talk to the lawyers in the room, discussing the legal profession’s role on what Weingarten called “the front line in the fight against the disgrace that is the Trump administration.”

“It had almost a family feel to it. It wasn’t just a candidate running for president. It’s a friend running for president,” Weingarten said. “But I’m supporting her because we think she’s the best person for the job.”