Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office agreed to pay $570 an hour to attorneys at an outside law firm that contributed to Brown’s campaign, records obtained by The Center Square show.

Four additional law firms that received contracts with the AG’s office donated to the campaign of Brown, a Democrat, records show. Together, the five firms and their affiliated political action committees contributed $30,250 to Brown’s campaign committee.

Brown’s office signed the contract with Ballard Spahr LLP of Philadelphia in November 2022. Two years earlier, the firm donated $2,500 to Friends of Anthony Brown, Brown’s campaign committee, according to state campaign finance records. Two months after the contract was signed, the law firm donated another $2,500. The contract also pays paralegals $295 an hour. If renewed, attorney rates increased to $595 an hour and paralegal rates to $315 an hour.

Brown’s office initially refused to release the hourly rates but reversed course Wednesday after The Center Square appealed to the Public Access Ombudsman, a voluntary, confidential mediator.

The Center Square requested the records for contracts with outside counsel since 2023, the year Brown, 61, took office. Brown’s office released two outside-counsel contracts and the names of 81 law firms, lawyers and legal nonprofits with which it entered into agreements.

The redaction was at odds with two recent rulings by the state’s Public Information Act Compliance Board, which held that another government agency should make similar payment information public.

Under the contract, Ballard Spahr may represent multiple state agencies, including the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services. A Ballard Spahr spokesman did not respond to two requests for interview.

The office also declined to provide bidding documents or requests for proposals to show how the contracts were issued and the total amounts paid the firms.

‘Not appropriate’
Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the state attorney general’s offices should disclose what it agreed to pay outside lawyers.

“That’s not appropriate,” he told The Center Square in an interview. “Law firms make political donations to campaigns, and in a lot of cases, private lawyers make more money per hour than government lawyers. The public should know what it’s paying for.”

The Center Square sent an interview request to the attorney general’s office, but staff did not respond.

In a statement explaining the initial decision, Kavon Robinson, executive associate for the Public Information Act coordinator, defended the redaction of the billing rates.

“These rates constitute confidential commercial and financial information voluntarily provided by outside counsel in connection with their engagement with the OAG and are of a kind that outside counsel would not customarily release to the public,” Robinson wrote. “Disclosure of these rates could competitively harm outside counsel’s business interests by revealing their negotiated pricing to competitors and the public.”

Brown’s office did not explain why it later released the rates or whether it had changed its interpretation of the Maryland Public Information Act.

In two recent decisions, Maryland’s Public Information Act Compliance Board rejected assertions by the Prince George’s County Public Schools that certain payment information for outside counsel could be withheld or redacted.

In March 2025, the board ruled that the school system improperly withheld a private attorney’s hourly rates, noting that “a mere request for confidentiality is insufficient to establish that the exemption applies.” In a separate decision last March, the board found that the school system had to do more than make a “bare and conclusory assertion” that information is confidential.

Since Brown took office in 2023, the attorney general’s office has entered into outside counsel contracts with at least 81 law firms, lawyers, or legal nonprofits. Some of those contracts were available for use by other state agencies.

81 law firms
They include large national law firms such as Arnold & Porter, Maryland and Washington, D.C.-based firms such as Gorman Williams, and solo practitioners like Carol Lynn Green.

In addition, they include three Washington-based advocacy groups—the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, States United for Democracy Center, and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. Each is a tax-exempt public charity known as 501(c)(3) organizations. Officials with the Brady Center, States United, and the Institute did not return emails or voicemails for comment.

The Attorney General’s Office also redacted parts of an outside-counsel contract with Relman Colfax PLLC of Washington, D.C., withholding details about the firm’s scope of representation. Unlike billing rates, what lawyers were hired to do may raise different legal issues such as attorney-client privilege, Painter said.

Of the 81 firms that signed outside-counsel engagements, 13 were hired more than once. Two firms, Barnes & Thornburg and Saul Ewing, received three separate engagements each.

Saul Ewing was also one of five retained law firms that donated to Brown’s campaign committee, either directly or through their political action committee. The others are Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll LLP, Whiteford Taylor & Preston LLP, and Venable LLP. All but Venable signed or were offered two or more outside counsel contracts.

Venable Maryland PAC donated $7,250; Cohen Milstein, $5,000; Whiteford Taylor and Preston PAC, $1,000; and Saul Ewing LLP, $12,000.

More here

Tagged: Partner BACK TO HOMEPAGE