Problems in West Virginia’s legal community seem to keep rising to new heights. Just last month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case related to the powerful coal company Massey Energy and its spending of $3 million to elect a West Virginia Supreme Court Justice who would vote Massey’s way.  This week, a citizens group in the Mountain State reported that the West Virginia Attorney General has a pattern of hiring as outside counsel those law firms that contributed mightily to his 2008 re-election campaign.  “There is the perception of a pay-to-play arrangement” in the office of AG Darrell McGraw, according to Steve Cohen, executive director of the West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse. The organization analyzed campaign finance reports to find the data.  In some cases, McGraw’s office cut checks for the firms without requiring an accounting of the number of hours the attorneys worked on a case, Cohen told The West Virginia Record.  A state’s top law enforcement official and its judiciary must be above reproach without even a suggestion of a conflict of interest when pursuing cases and making decisions.  One solution is the public financing of elections. This reduces the influence of big-dollar donations from those who benefit from legal actions.