Biglaw

Billionaire Attacks Biglaw Firm For Helping The Homeless. Also Detroit For Some Reason.

Of course it's Elon Musk.

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Billionaire Elon Musk at Paris Viva Tech Fair

Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Homeless and in San Francisco? Ever had a moral philosophy professor that didn’t immediately shake their head once you walked through the door frame? Congratulations, you’ve a new reason to be pissed off at Elon Musk. King Twit (or is it King X now?) is mad at Latham & Watkins for doing the unthinkable: giving a damn about the rights of the homeless. From the San Francisco Standard:

Tech mogul Elon Musk has called for a boycott of global law firm Latham & Watkins for providing legal support to a San Francisco nonprofit that’s suing the city over the rights of homeless people.

The lawsuit, brought by a local advocacy nonprofit called the Coalition on Homelessness, alleges the city has broken federal law by displacing and destroying the property of homeless people without providing them shelter beds.

In Bird culture, this would be considered an all-around dick move. Considering this is coming from a guy who has no problem buying multi-billion dollar vanity projects that depreciate rapidly under his leadership, you think he’d just try to fix this like anything else that inconveniences him — by throwing wads of money. Instead, he’s resorting to a boycott. What’s with Republicans taking the civil rights movement playbook and deploying it in the worst ways possible?

Somehow, Elon Musk isn’t the only combatant in the fight against homeless people. There’s the police, of course, but he’s also got a horrible soundboard in Garry Tan:

[J]oined fellow Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, who demanded the law firm resign from the case following a controversial hearing that featured dueling rallies outside a federal courthouse last Wednesday.

“Let’s ask our companies to cease all work with @lathamwatkins,” Musk tweeted in reply to Tan on Friday.

“They want war? Let’s give it to them. We cannot let these snakes win or San Francisco will end up like Detroit,” Musk tweeted in a separate reply to Tan on Saturday.

Lawyer jokes at the expense of esquires are part and parcel of the profession. But it takes a special type of Grinch to attack lawyers doing pro bono work.

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And how will San Francisco end up like Detroit? By clinging to an auto manufacturing base that cannot sustain its infrastructure in light of foreign competition? Because that’s Detroit’s problem. That and the Lions.

We wish the best of luck to Latham and the people they are defending. Try to not let chucklenuggets — billionaire or otherwise — distract you from fighting on behalf of the people that need the support.

Elon Musk Calls for Boycott of Law Firm Involved in San Francisco Homelessness Lawsuit [SF Standard]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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