“Everyone is entitled to a defense” contend large law firms when they represent notorious corporate clients, but many of these firms push the ethical envelope. That’s the crux of the discussion Ralph has with David Enrich as outlined in his book, “Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice.” Plus, we welcome Dr. Michael Jacobson, founder, and former director of Science in the Public Interest to tell us how we need to raise taxes on Science in the Public Interest to reduce alcohol-related deaths and mayhem.

David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor at the New York Times, and the bestselling author of Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction. His latest book is Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice.

There’s a lot of lip service that the leaders of the legal industry pay to being good corporate citizens and being public-spirited officers of the court. And you often scratch a little bit beneath the surface of these giant law firms, and you realize that is just not true.

David Enrich, author of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice

It was very clear to me the vast power that these law firms were wielding, not only defending their clients in and out of court, but also shaping the public’s perception of how these fights were transpiring—  in large part through the media. It’s more or less taboo— in the mainstream media in particular— to really pull back the curtain on the way that those law firms are operating

David Enrich, author of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice

[Jones Day] is not a monolith, and it’s not a place that I regard as evil. But it’s really a classic example of a place where even well-intentioned lawyers go, and—to make a living or to repay their debts or whatever—and they sometimes end up really pushing the envelope.

David Enrich, author of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice

When they say “we believe in the position of the clients we represent…” it really isn’t true. They don’t believe in all the positions of their clients. And when you nail them on that issue, they say “Well, we’re required by the professional code of ethics of our profession to zealously represent these clients. It’s not up to us to expose their Achilles heel— that’s what the adversarial system is for.”

Ralph Nader

Michael Jacobson holds a PhD. in microbiology from MIT. He is well-known for his nutrition advocacy that helped eliminate artificial trans-fat from the food supply, expose the enormous calorie counts of movie theater popcorn and many restaurant foods and make Nutrition Facts mandatory on food packages. Dr. Jacobson is the author of Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet.

There’s no doubt that raising alcohol taxes would raise the price of alcoholic beverages, and consumption would decline. For any kind of imaginable tax increase, alcohol problems and deaths would not go to zero. But there would be a significant decline in proportion to the increase in tax rates.

Dr. Michael Jacobson