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rule of law
Big Law Needs to Stand up to Trump
The attack on law firms will not stop until the entire legal profession uses the skills of advocacy and persuasion that is its craft to explain how and why the political intimidation being used by the administration threatens its independence.
Mar 26, 2025
The legal profession is under attack in ways never imagined before. In recent weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has targeted three large law firms with executive orders designed to cripple their practices in retaliation for representing Democratic candidates and causes.
On Friday, the assault moved to a new level with the issuance of a memorandum threatening all lawyers with unspecified sanctions and penalties who challenge the president or his administration.
What matters now is how the legal profession responds.
Why would a client choose lawyers to represent them who won’t stand up for themselves?
The orders pose existential threats to the firms. Two of the orders bar the firms’ lawyers from entering federal buildings and require the firms’ clients to report their connection with the law firm in any bid for government contracts.
Faced with the risk that their corporate clients would leave, one of the law firms, Perkins Coie, decided to fight, and another, Paul Weiss, decided last Thursday to cut a deal with the White House. In exchange for lifting the executive order, Paul Weiss promised to provide $40 million of free legal services to support President Trump’s political initiatives and agenda.
The decision made by Paul Weiss was a grievous mistake.
In the short term, it is hard to understand how cutting a deal with this President solves the problem Paul Weiss faces. It is as likely that clients will bolt the firm in disgust over the firm’s decision to capitulate in the face of a threat as it was with the executive order in place. Why would a client choose lawyers to represent them who won’t stand up for themselves?
This sentiment may well gain traction in the coming weeks, given that the firm that decided to fight, Perkins Coie, so far appears successful in its efforts to hold the executive order unlawful in court.
It is also difficult to see how Paul Weiss can ensure the benefit of any bargain it thinks it got. A deal with Trump is not worth the paper it is written on. The White House is already recasting the deal to promote its interests. It claims that Brad Karp, the managing partner of Paul Weiss, promised to end diversity initiatives at the firm and agreed that a former partner at the firm, Mark Pomerantz, who left the firm years ago and later joined the prosecution team in a case brought against President Trump, had engaged in “wrongdoing.” None of that appears in the copy of the agreement circulated by Mr. Karp to his firm.
And nothing in the agreement prevents President Trump from reinstating the executive order if Paul Weiss fails to do what he wants. It is no different from what the Trump Justice Department has attempted to do with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. There, Justice Department lawyers have asked a federal judge to drop bribery charges against the mayor, but without giving up the right to reassert the charges in the future. Like a mafia boss, it gives the president unfettered power to force a supplicant to do his bidding.
But the more important point that has been lost in the discussion over what Paul Weiss has done is the long-term damage it will do to the independence of the legal profession.
Before Paul Weiss cut its deal, President Trump made clear he was coming after the entire profession, not just three firms. Ten days ago, the newly installed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the agency was investigating 20 of the country’s most prominent firms for alleged discriminatory practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The EEOC investigation is a fishing expedition. None of the investigatory letters sent to the law firms identifies any practice that violates federal anti-discrimination law. As seven former EEOC officials point out in a recent open letter, the EEOC has far exceeded its own authority in making the inquiry. The purpose is to intimidate and create fear. It sends the message to all firms, and their collective clients, to end efforts to diversify their workforce or the government will come for you.
Paul Weiss’ decision to capitulate adds fuel to the fire. Having put a gun to the head of one of the country’s biggest firms and walked away with $40 million in free legal services makes it more likely President Trump will target more law firms with executive orders and investigations. He did just that on Friday night with the issuance of the new memorandum.
The threat to the rule of law posed by this attack is far bigger than any one legal issue. It is a brazen assault on the right of lawyers to represent their clients to the best of their ability within the bounds of the law and the ethics of the profession.
The executive orders directed at Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss are designed to deter them from representing clients or causes President Trump opposes. The EEOC investigation warns firms not to interpret the law in ways the Trump government disapproves of. The memorandum is an effort to keep lawyers from challenging the legality of Trump’s actions in court. It is all part of the Trump playbook designed to intimidate and co-opt the best lawyers and law firms who might oppose him, and get them instead to support his initiatives.
We all lose if lawyers fear to represent clients or give their best advice based on political affiliation or interests. An independent judiciary depends on strong and independent lawyers who are free to advocate for and protect the rights of their clients, no matter what political party they belong to. No cases can be decided, and no law can be made, without lawyers to bring cases before judges and argue the merits of a client’s position.
Democracy and the rule of law, in turn, depend on an independent judiciary as a check on tyranny. But it begins with the lawyers. Without a free and unfettered bar, the engine of the judiciary can’t operate.
Chief Justice Roberts has spoken up for the independence of the judiciary with his rebuke of those calling to impeach a federal judge who ruled against the president. It is high time for all law firms to follow suit and stand up in defense of their profession.
The news has reported that Donald Verrilli, the former solicitor general, is preparing an amicus brief, or “friend of the court” brief, in support of Perkins Coie, but that law firms are undecided whether to file it. The handwringing needs to end. Every law firm that cares about its First Amendment freedoms, and the right to practice law as it has been done in this country since its founding, must now come together in support of Perkins Coie with a single voice.
There is no alternative. Benjamin Franklin is credited with observing that “we must all hang together or, most assuredly, we will hang separately.” The attack on law firms will not stop until the entire legal profession, especially Big Law, stands up and uses the skills of advocacy and persuasion that is its craft to explain how and why the political intimidation being used by the Trump administration threatens its independence, and that of the judiciary, upon which our democracy relies.
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Trump’s Rule by Fiat Is a Grotesque Continuation, Not an Aberration
The playbook he uses was written by both parties over decades of eroding democratic norms, consolidating executive power, and circumventing meaningful checks on authority.
Mar 25, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest defiance of the courts—this time refusing to follow an appellate judge’s order to halt migrant deportations—has triggered another round of liberal outrage. Critics are calling it an authoritarian move, a blatant assault on the rule of law, and a warning sign that American democracy is on its last legs.
But if this is the end of democracy, it’s been ending for a long time. And not just at Trump’s hands.
The central truth we keep missing—especially on the left—is that Trump is not an aberration. He’s a grotesque continuation. The playbook he uses was written by both parties over decades of eroding democratic norms, consolidating executive power, and circumventing meaningful checks on authority. Trump didn’t invent the impulse to rule by fiat; he just brings it out into the open.
If we want to stop the next Trump, or the next expansion of executive lawlessness, we can’t keep pretending he came out of nowhere.
Consider the legal justification Trump has floated for ignoring the courts: The United States is “at war.” Therefore, he claims, wartime powers apply—even domestically, even over immigration courts. To many, this sounds like a dystopian twist. But it’s eerily familiar. Because the same logic has been used, repeatedly, by both Republican and Democratic administrations since 9/11.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which gave the executive branch sweeping powers to pursue terrorism around the world. That one document has served as the legal scaffolding for 20-plus years of undeclared wars and covert operations in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
No further congressional approval was needed. The public never had a say. The war powers clause of the Constitution became symbolic—if not obsolete.
Former President Barack Obama inherited that framework and expanded it. His administration developed the now-infamous drone kill list, justified targeted assassinations (including of U.S. citizens), and defended the government’s right to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects without trial. Obama didn’t officially suspend habeas corpus, but in practice, he upheld a system that made the writ meaningless for hundreds of detainees held at Bagram and Guantánamo. The position of his Department of Justice was clear: The executive has the authority to detain and kill, beyond judicial oversight, because we are at war.
This is the true bipartisan legacy that paved the way for Trump. The removal of checks and balances didn’t happen overnight. It was built incrementally, piece by piece, under the banner of national security—with the cooperation and silence of the same liberal establishment that now acts scandalized by Trump’s every defiance.
It’s worth asking: Why wasn’t there more pearl clutching when the executive branch was unilaterally deciding who lived or died abroad, without congressional debate or judicial process? Why didn’t more alarm bells ring when Democrats joined Republicans in handing over war-making powers and then refused to take them back? Why was it acceptable to rule by emergency decree when the emergency was foreign—but suddenly unacceptable when the same logic is turned inward?
Trump is now openly talking about “eradicating” the Houthis in Yemen—an aggressive military escalation that directly contradicts the MAGA-era promise of no new foreign wars. So much for populist anti-interventionism. In lockstep with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, Trump appears eager to resume the forever war posture. And once again, no one’s talking about congressional approval.
This is the cycle we’re caught in. Trump exposes the tools others helped create. He strips them of their moral veneer, revealing the ugly core. And rather than confront the system itself, liberals point at Trump as a singular villain—as if everything was working just fine before he came along.
The truth is harder to face: If we want to stop the next Trump, or the next expansion of executive lawlessness, we can’t keep pretending he came out of nowhere. We need to reckon with the fact that our democracy has been undermined from within—by both parties, for years. We need to challenge not just the man, but the machine.
And that’s something the Democratic Party, in its current corporate and security-state-aligned form, seems unwilling—or unable—to do. It would require renouncing its own legacy, from the Clinton-era crime bill to Obama-era surveillance and drone wars. It would require fundamentally rethinking how power is distributed in this country, and how easily it can be abused.
Until that happens, we shouldn’t be surprised when the next Trump defies the next court order. We shouldn’t act shocked when the language of war is used to suspend due process. We shouldn’t cling to the fantasy that our institutions will save us, when those institutions have been hollowed out by decades of bipartisan compromise.
Trump didn’t break democracy. He just took the mask off.
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'Chilling and Unprecedented': Trump Memo Threatens Law Firms That Cross His Administration
"Good lawyers, regardless of ideology or party, will remain undeterred in the honorable pursuit of our profession," wrote the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mar 23, 2025
Legal advocacy groups have issued a sharp rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump's directive aimed at holding "accountable" law firms and lawyers that, according to him, "engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States."
"Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity," Trump wrote in a memorandum to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which was issued late Friday. Trump directed Bondi to "seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms" who engage in objectionable litigation, and scrutinize litigation against the government stretching back over the past eight years.
The new directive is a widening of Trump's campaign against lawyers and law firms he does not like. Reuters reported Saturday that the Trump administration has been hit with over 100 legal challenges, taking aim at various White House actions.
Multiple legal groups denounced the move, saying they would not be intimidated.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, wrote on Sunday that for over 30 years her organization "has stood strong against attacks on reproductive freedom. We have litigated scores of cases in federal courts, including against the U.S. government, regardless of the political party in power."
"We will not back down in the face of the president's intimidation campaign—not while his administration refuses to defend women who are denied emergency abortion care; not while it condones violence at abortion clinics; and not while doctors are under threat of criminal prosecution for providing essential care. Not now and not ever," she continued.
Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), echoed this sentiment in a statement released on Saturday.
"This action by the president of the United States is a chilling and unprecedented attack on the foundations of liberty and democracy. Good lawyers, regardless of ideology or party, will remain undeterred in the honorable pursuit of our profession. We will continue to stand up for the people and the rule of law," Wang wrote.
Trump specifically called out lawyers working in the immigration space. "The immigration system... is likewise replete with examples of unscrupulous behavior by attorneys and law firms. For instance, the immigration bar, and powerful Big Law pro bono practices, frequently coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims," he wrote.
Kelli Stump, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), and the group's executive director Ben Johnson, pushed back on Trump's claims.
"The broad assertion that immigration attorneys are acting improperly in their efforts to represent individuals against an increasingly complex and restrictive immigration system is both unfounded and dangerous," they wrote in a statement on Saturday.
The memo also name drops Marc Elias, a prominent attorney who has worked for multiple major Democratic political campaigns.
Skye Perrymen, the CEO and president of the legal group Democracy Forward—where Elias serves as board chair—said in a statement on Saturday that "the ongoing threats to the legal profession and the rule of law by the president are intended to intimidate and inspire fear, but instead they should inspire action."
"The president's increasing targeting of lawyers, the legal profession, and judges is in response to a number of instances where communities across the nation have had to go to federal court to protect their rights from this administration's overreach and where judges nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents and confirmed by the U.S. Senate have found that the Trump-Vance administration's actions warrant scrutiny and, in many cases, are unlawful," added Perrymen.
Democracy Forward, the ACLU, and AILA have all brought cases challenging Trump administration actions.
The order comes at the end of a rocky week for the field of law. On Thursday, one of the country's top law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, brokered a deal with the White House in order to spare the firm from an executive order that suspended security clearances for lawyers and staff.
As part of the deal, according to a post from Trump on social media, the firm "will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump's term to support the administration's initiatives, including: assisting our nation's veterans, fairness in the justice system, the president's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects."
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