Shanmugam Talks About Running a SCOTUS Practice in a Pandemic

Leading Supreme Court advocate Kannon Shanmugam says “the most dramatic departure” since the start of the pandemic is getting hired for major matters without seeing clients face-to-face.

“I have Supreme Court cases that are ongoing where I have never actually physically seen my clients,” Shanmugam said in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg Law’s “Cases and Controversies” podcast fresh off his 30th high court argument.

Shanmugam, who joined Paul Weiss in 2019 and is the managing partner in the firm’s Washington office, jokes that no one told him he’d be in charge of the office in the middle of a global pandemic.

“The major challenge this year was shifting the office and the law firm almost overnight to fully remote operations,” the former Antonin Scalia clerk said.

Still, he’s trying to maintain what he called “the ordinary rhythm of legal practice,” doing things they would’ve done before, just remotely.

That includes weekly office lunches over Zoom and one-on-one calls with all the associates in the Washington office.

The pandemic isn’t getting in the way of success. His team has convinced the justices to accept five petitions for review this term.

Then there’s the crucial task of mentoring young lawyers, likewise made more difficult by the remote circumstances.

“Every law firm is facing this challenge right now,” Shanmugam said. Regular contact is key, he said, whether it’s holding virtual office hours or hopping on a Zoom call with the team to bat ideas around about a case.

And like other professionals, there’s the ever-present task of balancing home and work life.

“It’s been an enormous challenge since March. I’m not gonna lie,” Shanmugam said. “My wife is a doctor and she, by definition, has a much more important job than I do during this pandemic.” They have three boys, ranging in age from three to 13, which he said makes it “pretty noisy at home.”

That’s where having the option to head into the firm’s K Street office comes in handy.

“I can come into the office if I need to do something that requires quiet, or where I don’t want to have a three-year-old wearing nothing but a diaper running through the back of a Zoom call—as has happened on more than one occasion,” Shanmugam said.