Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Richmond-based Hunton & Williams has drawn controversy as it has advised Republican staffers in Congress in the writing of a bill that would limit the government's regulatory powers. The law firm represents the utility industry, a chemical company and other corporations that want to push the legislation through.
The fight over the proposal, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., has had Hunton & Williams written all over it.
Kyle McSlarrow, Dole's top aide on the legislation, worked on the firm's environmental law team until January.
Another Hunton & Williams alumnus - U.S. Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va. - is considered a pivotal vote in the battle over Dole's plan.
At the same time, lawyers still working for the prestigious firm have been hit with unflattering portrayals in national press reports about the regulatory battle.
A New York Times story this spring recounted a Senate Judiciary Committee briefing in which three Hunton & Williams lawyers were seated at the head table with the committee's Republican staff director. Several participants said top committee staffers appeared to defer to the Hunton & Williams lawyers to explain the details of the bill.
"I've never seen anything like it," one Senate staffer said this week. "The Dole bill had to be explained by Hunton & Williams attorneys. It just blew my mind."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote a letter to Hunton & Williams demanding that it disclose whether any of its clients had paid the firm for helping the Judiciary Committee draft the legislation.
One of the Hunton & Williams lawyers, Henry V. Nickel, said the briefing was merely an effort to explain the legislation to Democrats "from the perspective of the kind of people the Republican staff had talked to."
Another one of the attorneys, George C. Freeman Jr., said he was there as an individual to give his "personal views" and provide historical background on similar legislation that he helped craft in 1982. A week after the story broke, the American Bar Association's president raised questions about Freeman's participation.
Freeman had been co-chairman of the ABA's Working Group on Regulatory Reform. In that role, he was acting as a spokesman for the association on the regulatory proposal at the same time his firm was lobbying for passage of the bill.
The bar association said he had a conflict of interest and removed him as co-chairman. Freeman said he had no conflict and that he never misrepresented the ABA's views.
"I just felt like I was mousetrapped on this thing and treated very unfairly," Freeman said. "People who are trying to block this legislation try to get things in the paper and stir it all up."
Freeman, a senior partner at Hunton & Williams, founded its environmental law team and hired McSlarrow, the current Dole aide, to work at the firm.
He worked with Robb when Robb was a Hunton & Williams partner in the mid-1980s. Freeman said he had talked with Robb - and other senators - about the regulatory bill as an ABA spokesman, but he is no longer working on this legislation.
"I'm very close personal friends with him and see him frequently and talk to him about a lot of issues," Freeman said. "A lot of people leave private practice and go to Capitol Hill, and they still continue to talk to their former associates. ... It's the kind of thing that happens all the time."
by CNB