The Maryland Attorney General’s Office agreed to pay attorneys at Ballard Spahr LLP $570 an hour under a contract signed while the Philadelphia-based firm was donating to Attorney General Anthony Brown’s campaign, according to records obtained by The Center Square.
Paralegals under the same agreement were billed at $295 an hour. If renewed, the rates were set to rise to $595 for attorneys and $315 for paralegals.
Ballard Spahr donated $2,500 to Friends of Anthony Brown two years before the November 2022 contract and another $2,500 two months after it was signed, state campaign finance records show.
Four additional law firms that received outside-counsel contracts with the attorney general’s office also contributed to Brown’s campaign committee or affiliated political action committees. Together, the five firms and their PACs gave $30,250.
The other donors were Saul Ewing LLP ($12,000), Venable Maryland PAC ($7,250), Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll LLP ($5,000) and Whiteford Taylor & Preston PAC ($1,000). All but Venable signed or were offered two or more engagements.
Brown’s office initially refused to release the hourly rates when The Center Square requested outside-counsel contracts dating to 2023, the year Brown took office. The office reversed course Wednesday after the news outlet appealed to the Public Access Ombudsman.
In a statement defending the original redaction, Kavon Robinson, executive associate for the Public Information Act coordinator, said the rates constituted “confidential commercial and financial information” that outside counsel would not customarily release. Disclosure, the statement said, could competitively harm the firms by revealing negotiated pricing.
The attorney general’s office did not explain why it later released the rates or whether it had revised its interpretation of the Maryland Public Information Act. Staff did not respond to interview requests from The Center Square.
Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said attorney general offices should disclose what they agree to pay outside lawyers. “That’s not appropriate,” Painter said. “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 redaction conflicted with two recent rulings by the state’s Public Information Act Compliance Board. In separate March 2025 decisions involving Prince George’s County Public Schools, the board rejected efforts to withhold outside-counsel hourly rates, stating that a mere request for confidentiality is insufficient and that agencies must do more than offer “bare and conclusory” assertions.
Since Brown took office, the attorney general’s office has entered into outside-counsel agreements with at least 81 law firms, individual lawyers or legal nonprofits. Thirteen of those entities were hired more than once. Barnes & Thornburg and Saul Ewing each received three separate engagements.
Some of the contracts may be used by other state agencies, including the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services. The office also withheld portions of a contract with Relman Colfax PLLC describing the scope of representation, a redaction that raises separate questions of attorney-client privilege, according to Painter.
Among the 81 entities are large national firms such as Arnold & Porter, regional firms including Gorman Williams, solo practitioners and three Washington-based 501(c)(3) advocacy groups: the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, States United for Democracy Center and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.
The attorney general’s office declined to release bidding documents or requests for proposals that would show how the contracts were awarded or the total amounts paid.
Outside counsel is routinely retained by state attorneys general for specialized litigation, overflow work or matters requiring particular expertise. Transparency advocates argue that when those firms also appear as campaign donors, the public has a heightened interest in knowing the terms of the engagements and the process used to select them.
Brown, a Democrat, took office in January 2023 after serving in the U.S. House and as Maryland’s lieutenant governor. His office has pursued a high volume of litigation, including multi-state challenges to federal policies, which can increase the need for external legal support.
The newly released Ballard Spahr rates and the pattern of campaign contributions from other contracted firms add concrete details to an ongoing discussion about the intersection of political fundraising and the state’s use of private counsel. Full contract documents and payment totals remain limited in the public record.
