As someone with experience with law firms, I note that it takes some doing to spend money when there is no promise of return. So I have been puzzling the association between Michael Cohen and Squire Patton Boggs. SPB is based in Cleveland, and was an early entrant into eastern Europe. SPB opened a Prague office in 1991and has offices around the world — in Moscow and Kiev (not advertised on their website), to name two additional offices. I find it interesting that in 2017 SPB paid Michael Cohen $500,000 as an association fee. Seeing as Mr. Cohen apparently brought in no clients, what was the rationale for the relationship? More interesting, what was the source of the money? Was it from one of SPB’s clients? Or was it just an energetic effort to develop business with a graduate of the unesteemed Thomas Cooley School of Law?
Coincidentially, SPB is one of the firms that is advising Cambridge Analytica; the firm also represents Gazprom as well as numerous local governments around the United States.
EDIT: After thinking about this for about 12 hours, if one was trying to get this done within a law firm, it might go like this: X, who is a client, will make a $1,000,000 retainer payment but wants us to be associated with Michael Cohen with a relationship fee of $500,000. In the lobbying world especially, law firms don’t bill by the hour — there are many monthly retainers where no work is done. This is all pure speculation on my part of course . . . I’m just trying to understand it.