Chamber Adds Bingham McCutchen to Its Long List of Lobby Shops

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has added Bingham McCutchen to its lobbying cadre of about two dozen firms.

John Schmitz, a Bingham partner who has offices in Washington and Frankfurt, Germany, is advocating for the business federation on the "[i]mplementation of Dodd-Frank and litigation reform issues," according to lobbying registration paperwork he filed with Congress on Thursday. Schmitz, who served as White House deputy counsel to President George H. W. Bush, focuses on regulatory matters and international transactions at Bingham.

He previously lobbied for the Chamber from 1999 to 2009 at Mayer Brown and 2009 to 2012 at Schmitz Global Partners, according to congressional records. Schmitz Global Partners didn't report any payments in excess of $5,000 from the organization when Schmitz was at the firm. But Mayer Brown reported that the Chamber paid it at least $1 million for three of the years he was lobbying for the group at the firm.

Schmitz, who joined Bingham in September 2012, wasn't immediately available for comment. Chamber spokeswoman Stephanie Ryska didn't have an immediate comment.

A vocal critic of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and what it considers needless lawsuits against businesses, the Chamber advocated on matters related to the legislation and litigation reform as part of its $103.9 million federal lobbying campaign last year. For its advocacy efforts, the Chamber used its own staffers, as well as lobbyists from firms that included Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrère & Denègre; Mayer Brown; Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough; Shook, Hardy & Bacon; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, according to congressional records.

Calls for both Dodd-Frank implementation and litigation reform made it into the Chamber's annual state of American business address earlier this month. The business federation will push "an agenda to make sure we preserve diverse sources of capital for our nation's job creators by seeking fixes to those areas of Dodd-Frank that Congress and the regulators simply got wrong," and will "fight to curb frivolous litigation on the state, federal, and international fronts," Chamber President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Donohue said in the address.

"We're going to deepen our bench of policy experts, communicators and lawyers to prevail in the battle of policy ideas, reach new audiences with a message of economic opportunity, and win courtroom victories and regulatory relief," he said.