Media client concerns about the firm's docket contributed to Douglas Mirell's decision to leave.

Well-known free-speech attorney Douglas Mirell is leaving the law firm he co-founded with Charles Harder, saying he feels the company's work for clients like President Donald Trump doesn't reflect his interest in protecting the First Amendment and that longtime clients were threatening to take their cases elsewhere. When Harder, Mirell and Jeffrey Abrams formed Harder Mirell & Abrams in 2013, Mirell says the focus was on representing A-list clients, living and dead, in right-of-publicity cases, typically involving the use of famous names and likenesses in advertising without permission. But the veteran entertainment litigator says he never could have imagined how the firm would evolve over the next five years, and its new direction became a significant problem for him. Harder has increasingly been in the spotlight for taking on high-profile cases against media companies on behalf of clients including Trump; his wife, Melania; Harvey Weinstein; and ex-Amazon Studios chief Roy Price. "I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the docket of matters we were handling," says Mirell. "They seemed irreconcilable with my core commitment to the defense of the First Amendment."

He traces the beginning of the shift to the firm's representation of Hulk Hogan in his explosive invasion-of-privacy lawsuit that garnered a $140 million verdict and bankrupted Gawker Media. "Following the Hulk Hogan case, the firm focused its practice more and more on reputation issues that entailed adversity to major media companies," says Mirell. "I had spent much of my career defending media companies, and I have been involved with the ACLU since I became a lawyer." While Mirell won't identify any single issue as the final nail in the coffin, he says his clients had major concerns about Harder's representation of Trump.