"Ed Gillespie, who will help promote President Bush's future nominee to a vacancy on the Supreme Court, is a top-tier lobbyist who represents a host of clients with direct and indirect interests in the outcome of Supreme Court decisions." Gillespie's task is "to use the tools and techniques of a presidential campaign to put together a conservative political machine equipped to take on the alliance of groups on the political left." But his firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, "represents corporations and trade associations with strong bottom-line interests in court rulings involving corporate liability, tort reform, antitrust and securities issues." Clients include the American Petroleum Institute, Microsoft, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Gillespie refused to discuss "the conflict-of-interest rules that will govern his activities," but others say "he is likely to give up active representation of clients" while he works for the nominee's confirmation.

Australian Financial Review legal editor Marcus Priest notes that in "what some unionists are calling an unholy alliance," the giant Australian forestry company Gunns is "using industrial tort avenues employers have traditionally used against workers engaged in industrial action" against 20 environmentalists and environmental groups. Gunns' legal team comprises EMA Legal, a law firm that works only for employers, and two "well-known union barristers," Stephen Howells and Mark Irving, who defended the Forestry Division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union in a case brought by environmentalists several years ago. Gunns legal action is seeking A$6.3 million in damages from the "Gunns 20" activists for damaging its profitability by campaigning against the logging of Tasmania's environmentally important forests.