Insight: Chamber of Commerce turns to small courts for big wins

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/23/us-usa-legal-chamber-insight-idUSBRE98M04P20130923


(Reuters) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has long used a small team of lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court, seeing the top court as a key battleground for business interests.

Now the Chamber's lawyers are increasingly looking beyond Washington D.C. by taking on more cases that might never reach the Supreme Court, but can affect business over wide swaths of the nation.

So far this year, the trade group's growing litigation arm has taken part in 84 cases, mostly by filing friend-of-the-court briefs, but also by launching direct challenges to government regulations. At the same point last year, the group had been involved in 63 cases and in 2011 it was 58.

The expansion can be traced mainly to actions in state courts and federal appeals courts, an analysis of the Chamber's court filings shows.

"Most cases in this country are not resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court," said Rachel Brand, a senior lawyer with the Chamber's litigation group, the National Chamber Litigation Center. "If you really want to expand your influence you have to be in other courts. A lot of law is made by state courts in particular."