Christine Blasey Ford–Lisa Banks attorney-client relationship

Christine Blasey Ford’s attorney-client relationship with Lisa Banks developed from an urgent decision about who would help her control a story she had kept private for years. Banks and her law partner Debra Katz offered Ford pro bono representation, then helped her assess whether and how to proceed, prepare for the possibility of public testimony, and negotiate with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Their work supported Ford through an unfamiliar legal and political process, while Ford remained closely involved in deciding what her account should sound like and how it should be told.

Finding Counsel

After speaking with Senator Dianne Feinstein about her letter, Ford began to understand the consequences it might have under the Capitol dome. She had resisted advice from confidantes to get a lawyer, in part because she and her husband were saving for a home in Hawaii and did not want to spend those funds. But the prospect that the letter might become public, and the need for counsel if it did, changed her mind.

The first Washington firms Ford contacted declined to take the matter. An appellate lawyer listened to her account and considered her credible, but his partners would not let him represent her publicly because of concerns about how the firm’s position might affect its cases before the courts. He could only advise her behind the scenes. The episode showed Ford that sympathetic attention was not the same as having someone able to stand with her publicly.

On August 6, after her grandmother’s death and just before Ford was due to leave the Washington area, she met Katz and Banks in person at a hotel near the Baltimore airport. Feinstein’s office had recommended the two lawyers, first asking them in general terms how an old allegation might be corroborated and then giving them its broad outline without naming Ford. Ford had read about their whistle-blower work, but arrived unsure what to make of their detailed questions about her story and background.

A Shared Assessment

Katz and Banks brought distinct experience to the meeting. Katz had worked on the legal team behind a landmark Supreme Court sexual-harassment case and approached the law as a means of advancing civil rights. Banks, her law partner and close friend, was known for a cooler manner and persistence. Their practice had handled workplace-harassment claims for years, often resolving them through private settlements that they regarded as imperfect tools. In the months after the Weinstein reporting, they had also represented congressional staffers and pursued legislative changes, sensing an unusual opportunity for broader progress.

After spending several hours with Ford, both lawyers regarded her as credible and were moved by her sense of civic duty. They also thought she did not fully appreciate the potential consequences of her letter becoming public. That combination mattered to their decision: Ford needed advice about what to do if the letter leaked, and guidance if she chose to pursue the matter even if it did not. Katz and Banks decided to represent her without charge.

Their work included practical efforts to assess what Ford could substantiate. She took a polygraph administered by a former FBI agent and contacted two former boyfriends to ask whether she had ever told them about an assault. Neither recalled such a disclosure. Ford’s inquiries made clearer to the legal team that she had told no one about the alleged attack for years. The relationship thus involved both legal counsel and the difficult preliminary work of examining what corroboration might be available without overstating what it could establish.

Negotiating a Public Role

As the prospect of a hearing took shape, the attorneys divided responsibilities within Ford’s broader team. Ricki Seidman developed the team’s proposed terms behind the scenes, while Katz and Banks negotiated directly with staff for Senator Chuck Grassley. The task was not simply to secure an appearance: Ford’s team needed to navigate the conditions under which she might testify before a committee considering Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

On the morning Katz appeared on television to discuss the matter, she went to a hospital for previously scheduled breast surgery. She had lived through breast cancer and recovered, and the procedure was to replace an implant. The scheduling could not be changed under her insurance arrangements. The detail gives a measure of the demands surrounding the representation: Katz was carrying out public and legal work even as a long-planned medical procedure proceeded that same day. The evidence describes the negotiations as a joint effort by Katz and Banks, rather than assigning every decision to either lawyer alone.

Preparation and Ford’s Voice

Before the scheduled testimony, Ford met her lawyers and other members of the team in a conference room at the Watergate Hotel. Katz and Banks moved between the hotel and their office as preparation and negotiations continued. In the room, Katz, a junior attorney, and another member of the team had drafted an opening statement from details Ford had shared with them and with The Washington Post. They had avoided sexually explicit language that they knew made her uncomfortable.

Ford nevertheless rewrote nearly the entire draft. Her objection was not that its facts were wrong: the language did not sound like her, and its order did not feel right. She worked through the statement as she did scientific papers, revising until she could make it her own. The exchange defined an important boundary within the attorney-client relationship. The lawyers could organize and prepare her account, but Ford retained the authority to shape its words and sequence.

Other members of the team reviewed possible questions with her and advised her not to speculate about ambiguous wording, to ask senators to break multipart questions into pieces, and to focus on telling the truth rather than anticipating the outcome. The preparation was therefore both procedural and personal: it gave Ford practical ways to handle questioning while keeping her account at its center. Banks’s place in the partnership was part of this continuing representation, from the first meeting through negotiations and the final preparation for testimony.