In the dark of night, a man, eyes wide and bloodshot, taps on his phone. A few pithy words. Minutes later, 200 million pings are heard around the world. The headlines the next morning tell of “attacks”, a “political storm” as bewildered leaders address the world’s press.
Never before has one (unelected) person had to do so little to exert so much influence. But that’s where we are with Elon Musk, the mercurial tech billionaire who in the past couple of weeks has rattled Britain’s political class after he accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being "deeply complicit in mass rapes in exchange for votes", referring to a national scandal centered on child abuse gangs in parts of Britain.
In a tweet to his 200 million followers on X, he called Jess Phillips, the member of Starmer’s cabinet responsible for safeguarding women and girls, a “rape genocide apologist”.
Whatever his understanding of the issues at play, and regardless of his motive, his interjections have led to a reopening of the matter in both public and political arenas.
It epitomizes Musk’s newfound power in the Trump era: an unprecedented ability to way public opinion, to command a large legal spend of his own, and a person you want to be on the right side of if you want access to the incoming President.
And if he can rattle world leaders with just a few words on X, what could the consequences be for Big Law firms, with whom he has enjoyed uneasy, awkward, at times tempestuous relationships? Work with him and you’re working with the man with a net worth that rivals Hong Kong’s GDP. But cross him and face being floored by a simple tweet.
Big Law is in awkward new territory that can broadly be summarised as: yes to big business; no to inflammatory rhetoric. But, like Trump before him, with Musk you get both. But strictly on his terms.
It doesn’t help that, so far, Musk’s involvement with Big Law (and senior in-house lawyers) reads like a series of cautionary tales...
