Covington’s Clemens Conflict

When Roger Clemens appears before Congress this morning to testify about steroid use, one of the many dark suited men with him will be Lanny Breuer, a partner at the Washington law firm Covington & Burling. What makes this especially interesting is that Covington represents Major League Baseball. In essence, then, Covington is representing a client – Clemens – in refuting charges levied against him in the Mitchell Report, which was commissioned by Covington’s client, MLB. Conflict? Maybe not technically, but it sure appears to be a conflict. According to The American Lawyer, MLB is pretty peeved that MLB took on the Clemens representation. While taking on Clemens is probably not unethical, I can’t say I blame MLB. That said, I’ll sure be watching tomorrow as Clemens and his former trainer, who has flatly contradicted Clemens’ claim that he never used performance enhancing drugs, both testify. Nothing like a potential high profile instance of perjury committed on live television to capture the imagination. And for what its worth, I think Clemens was juiced.