Pelicans become symbols of the broader fight for the environment in The Pelican Brief. The brown pelicans of the Louisiana wetlands are an endangered species. When Victor Mattiece tries to drill for oil in their nesting grounds, environmentalist lawyers turn the recognizable pelicans into a symbol of the entire marshland. Most people do not care about swamps, but they do respond to pelicans, whose size, unique shape, and association with the coastline make them iconic and sympathetic. The oil company has no corresponding way to defend itself. The pelicans become representatives of the wider battle for a clean environment.

The pelican gets another meaning as the nickname of Darby’s brief. Just like the pelicans, the person who wrote the brief and the people who read it find themselves in clear danger. Just Mattiece and his henchmen target the pelicans, so too do they target Darby. The plight of the pelicans echoes Darby’s efforts to bring justice to an amoral and uncaring world. Darby becomes like an endangered species, battling an enemy with seemingly unlimited resources simply to stay alive. The battle between the oil company capitalists and the world they want to trample is embodied in the actual pelicans that inhabit the wetlands and in the woman who writes the pelican brief that outlines their crimes.