Former U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. in his office at the U.S. Department of Justice in June. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ ALM

House general counsel Douglas Letter is getting a boost from Big Law in his legal fights with the Trump administration—all for free.

The private law firms tapped to help the House handle its unprecedented caseload—Munger, Tolles & Olson, Hogan Lovells and Sidley Austin—have pro bono arrangements, lawyers familiar with the deals and a spokesperson for Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed.

Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which offers free legal services for all of its clients, has done the same for the three House lawsuits it's involved in, ICAP executive director Joshua Geltzer said.

The House has turned to outside counsel in the past, but the free help being offered now stands in contrast to the steep legal bills outside attorneys racked up under Republican Speaker John Boehner in his lawsuits against the Obama administration.

Kerry Kircher, House general counsel from 2011 to 2016, said he wasn't able to get the kind of free representation Letter is accessing because the Republican lawsuits were unpopular among D.C. law firms.

"It wasn't like I could have gotten top-notch representation on a pro bono basis to do that," Kircher said.

During the Obama administration, the GOP-controlled House turned to private lawyers, first David Rivkin with Baker & Hostetler and then Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan's William Burck, to lead their suit against the Affordable Care Act. Rivkin was reportedly paid $500 an hour, according to an ABA Journal report.

But Rivkin dropped out of the case, reportedly over concerns that the unpopular position could hurt his firm, and Burck also backed out. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley was eventually hired for the lawsuit.

Turley received $500 an hour for his work on the suit, and was authorized to receive up to $350,000, according to a Democratic letter discussing the terms of his 2014 House contract.

Paul Clement, initially with King & Spalding, left the practice and joined Bancroft in 2011 to work on the House lawsuit defending the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, after the Obama Justice Department decided to stop protecting the law from legal challenges.

King & Spalding first backed Clement's work but later pulled its support from the suit, saying the "process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate." Clement is now a partner at Kirkland & Ellis.

Rivkin, Burck and Clement did not respond to requests for comment.

A contract obtained by ThinkProgress in 2011 shows that Clement, a former solicitor general, was paid $520 an hour for his work. The House initially set aside $500,000 for that litigation in 2011, but bumped it up to $3 million in 2013.

Kircher said that lawyers in D.C. are now "aroused" by the legal battles between lawmakers and the Trump administration, and are eager to get involved in the cases, even if it means they aren't getting paid for it.

"I'm not at all surprised he's turned to outside assistance," Kircher said of Letter. "I'm happy for him he's able to find it, I think he's gotten very good pro bono assistance."

Thomas Hungar, House general counsel from 2016 until Letter was brought on this year, said the kinds of legal cases on the House's docket are intriguing to private attorneys.

"A lot of times in kind of high-profiles cases like these against the government, people are willing to do it pro bono for a combination of reasons," Hungar said. "For ideological reasons, the opportunity to litigate a fun, exciting, cutting-edge case that's going to have a lot of public attention."

Under House ethics rules, lawmakers can accept free legal help for civil cases challenging the validity of federal rules and regulations, or federal officials or agencies' actions, given that it's not a private issue. The House also passed a resolution in June that authorized Letter to use external lawyers in court cases to enforce subpoenas.

Doug Letter.

While Letter still leads arguments in the courtroom, he's taken advantage of the outside counsel. ICAP helped his office in the legal fight over the census citizenship question, as well as seeking to defend a female genital mutilation ban that the DOJ stopped defending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

The Georgetown Law institute teamed up with the House again in the lawsuit to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn, whose testimony Democrats believe will play a key role in making the decision on whether to formally start impeachment proceedings.

Several of the attorneys signing on to help for free have extensive experience in the areas being litigated. Former Solicitor General Don Verrilli, who successfully defended Obamacare before the Supreme Court in 2012, is now helping defend the law again in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Three Sidley Austin attorneys—former DOJ lawyers Virginia Seitz and Joe Guerra, as well as U.S. Supreme Court veteran appellate lawyer Carter Phillips—have expertise in constitutional separation of powers issues. They are now pitching in on the House's appeal of its suit to block the Trump administration from diverting military funds for a border wall.

And former acting solicitor general and Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal said he's also helped with the census and female genital mutilation cases pro bono. While it didn't involve the House, Katyal also worked pro bono on litigation opposing the Trump administration's travel ban for individuals from several majority-Muslim countries.

"There's a whole range of stuff that Republican administrations engage in all the time, and you don't see the law firms challenging it," Katyal said. "But what's going on here, like the census case, is so beyond the pale. That's why you're seeing lawyers stand up and do this."

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