Trump’s Crusade Against Big Law is a Crusade Against Us All

Apr 08, 2025

Trump’s executive orders against Big Law are an affront to our Constitution. They blatantly defy its most basic tenets, from the separation of powers to rights protected by the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. By punishing Big Law firms for alleged misconduct without any kind of notice or hearing, the Trump administration is attempting to act as the judiciary, flagrantly violating the separation of powers, and depriving the firms of their Fifth Amendment right to due process. Further, because the orders seek to punish the firms based on the people they choose to employ and represent, they violate the firms’ First Amendment rights of free expression and association. And by seeking to control who the firms represent, the orders seek to violate every American’s right to counsel guaranteed under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

It is that last constitutional violation that should have everyone outraged and terrified in equal measure. While Trump’s executive orders undoubtedly violate the rights of Big Law firms, their ultimate goal is to undermine the rights of us all.

When our government impinges on our liberties, our Constitution guarantees us the right to hold it accountable. In addition to free speech, religion, and the press, enshrined in the First Amendment is our right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Under our system, we do that by filing suit against the government in court. And in order to do that, we need to exercise our constitutional right to counsel—that is, we need a lawyer. And Trump’s executive orders against Big Law are an attempt to make the legal community too afraid to represent anyone looking to hold him accountable.

In a nutshell, the logic behind Trump’s attacks on Big Law is this: If you can’t find a lawyer to represent you, you can’t get your day in court.

In theory, under our Constitution, the legislative branch should be holding Trump accountable. Unfortunately, both the House and the Senate have solid Republican majorities, and the Republican Party is refusing to do its job; instead, GOP lawmakers have chosen to fall in line with the corrupt Trump administration despite the harm he is inflicting on their constituents and our system of government. We can all show up to the polls in 2026 and put Democratic majorities back in both chambers so that Congress can finally do its job, but until then, as long as the GOP remains spineless, the only check we have on Trump is the judiciary branch.

But the judiciary can only check his power by ruling on the cases that are brought before it. And in order to bring a case before a judge, you need a lawyer.

You may be thinking, “What does Big Law have to do with my ability to file a lawsuit? I can’t afford the insanely high rates these firms charge, and they only work for big corporations anyway.” Well, here is the part of the story that you probably don’t know: The vast majority of the major lawsuits filed against the government in this country are backed by Big Law, which works on these cases in a pro bono capacity (free of charge). While the cases are typically led by nonprofits like the ACLU and Democracy Forward, these nonprofits rely on the armies of junior associates, paralegals, and legal secretaries that only Big Law is able to provide in order to take on the seemingly endless resources of the federal government. Without the pro bono support from Big Law working behind the scenes, plaintiffs suing the federal government wouldn’t stand a chance.

While Trump’s executive orders against Big Law seek to hurt the law firms’ businesses by costing them clients and revenue, those repercussions are not his primary goal. His fundamental purpose is to send a clear message to Big Law: Do not help those who would hold me accountable. And if he succeeds in scaring Big Law into abandoning the fight, our ability to fight back against this administration will be crippled.

In all of American history, we have never seen anything akin to Trump’s attacks on our legal community; however, we can look to foreign authoritarian regimes to find the source of his playbook. Hungary’s Orban, Turkey’s Erdogan, and Russia’s Putin all successfully waged wars against their countries’ lawyers to undermine the rule of law and quell their opposition. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stephens warned us of this danger in a 1985 dissent: “[D]isposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

Already Trump’s actions are having a chilling effect on the resistance. Sources who ask to remain anonymous, for fear of it becoming even harder to retain counsel, are struggling to find representation. One member of the Biden administration who has been targeted by Trump’s vindictiveness thought he had secured pro bono representation, but received a phone call the day after Trump signed the executive order against Perkins Coie informing him that the firm had suddenly discovered a “conflict of interest” and could no longer represent him. Five other firms told him the same thing.

At the time of this writing, 178 lawsuits have been filed against the second Trump administration. The plaintiffs to these suits will need support from Big Law to take on the daunting task of challenging the endless resources of the federal government. If Trump gets his way, that support won’t be there.

Timeline of Events

[For those of you curious about the details, below is a rundown of Trump’s actions and Big Law’s reactions to date. For those of you who just want to focus on the big picture, feel free to skip this part and move to the next section.]

Trump’s first attack on Big Law was small, perhaps a test to see how the public would react (Sadly, we largely didn’t react at all). His February 25^th memo targeting the Big Law firm Covington & Burling was limited, revoking the security clearances of only the lawyers directly involved in the defense of Jack Smith, who led the criminal prosecutions against Trump for illegally retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and inciting the January 6^th insurrection, and directing all agencies to review ties it may have to Covington and presumably cut them.

On March 6^th, Trump escalated to sweeping sanctions when he used his Sharpie to attack Perkins Coie. Its offense? Representing Hillary Clinton and hiring Fusion GPS, the firm behind the Steele dossier. This time, he didn’t limit punishment to those directly tied to HRC or the Steele dossier; he inflicted his wrath on the entire law firm, not only suspending all lawyer security clearances, but also barring them from federal buildings and forbidding any federal agencies from hiring the firm or working with contractors who employ it, essentially crippling the law firm’s ability to conduct business.

Perkins Coie chose to stand up and fight the Trump administration, and on March 12^th, just one day after filing suit, the firm scored an early victory when a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) in its favor, largely blocking implementation of the executive order. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said in her ruling that Trump’s order sent chills down her spine because it “threatens the very foundation of our legal system.”

Despite such a resounding chastisement from a federal judge, on March 14^th, just two days following her ruling, Trump attacked another Big Law firm, Paul Weiss. Its offense? Having once employed Mark Pomerantz, who helped investigate Trump’s hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels while working for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

You’d think Paul Weiss would have taken heart from Perkins Coie’s win in court, but not so. Instead of standing up for the rule of law, on March 20^th, Paul Weiss’s chairman negotiated a deal with the Trump administration in which he admitted to Mark Pomerantz’s alleged wrongdoing (though Pomerantz hadn’t actually done anything wrong), agreed to gut the firm’s DEI hiring practices, and committed $40 million in pro bono legal work to causes supported by Trump. The executive order issued against Paul Weiss was rescinded the next day.

Paul Weiss’s decision to bend the knee likely emboldened Trump, because on March 22^nd, the day after rescinding his order against Paul Weiss, Trump signed a memo broadly attacking all lawyers, ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate anyone who represents a client filing suit against the administration and “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” Lawyers are already held to high ethical standards, and procedures to hold them accountable for abuse of their positions have long been in place. But the power to use those procedures and enforce penalties and sanctions belongs to the courts, not the executive branch. While the idea of Pam Bondi determining whether litigation is “vexatious” is appalling, any attorney general holding that kind of authority over the legal profession undermines the independence of our country’s judiciary branch, the right to due process, and the principle of separation of powers.

Just three days following his memo against all attorneys, on March 25^th, Trump returned his focus to attacking individual Big Law firms, signing an executive order punishing Jenner & Block, whose primary offense was once employing Andrew Weissman, the lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office when it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. Just like the orders against Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss, the order stripped all Jenner & Block attorneys of their security clearances, barred them from federal buildings, ordered executive agencies to cut ties with the firm, and demanded that anyone contracting with the federal government disclose a relationship with the firm.

Two days later, on March 27^th, Trump issued a nearly identical executive order against another Big Law firm, this time targeting WilmerHale, apparently because Robert Mueller had at one time been a partner there. WilmerHale was hit with the same laundry list of sanctions as Jenner & Block.

Like Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale decided to stand up to Trump and filed lawsuits against the administration. And on March 28^th both firms were granted TROs similar to the one awarded to Perkins Coie. Three Big Law firms chose to fight the Trump administration, and three separate federal judges in three separate lawsuits all handed down initial rulings in favor of those firms.

Unfortunately, despite these wins, another giant of Big Law chose to follow in Paul Weiss’s footsteps and take the coward’s way out. Skadden, the sixth largest U.S. law firm by revenue, struck a deal with Trump the same day Jenner & Block and WilmerHale were granted their TROs, only this time, Trump’s price had increased—Skadden had to promise Trump $100 million in pro bono services, more than double the deal Paul Weiss had negotiated.

You may be wondering, why did Skadden make a deal? After all, the firm hadn’t been named in an executive order yet. Well, it was likely because of a March 23^rd Tweet by shadow president Elon Musk in which he called the firm out by name, posting, “Skadden, this needs to stop now,” in reference to Skadden’s pro bono representation of a man falsely accused of election fraud in the thoroughly debunked film 2000 Mules.

Skadden’s choice to bend the knee undermined any chance that Jenner & Block and WilmerHale’s victories in court could have led to at least a slowdown in Trump’s efforts to cow Big Law. Following the announcement of his deal with Skadden, Trump bragged, “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much. Where do I sign? Where do I sign?’”

Two more preemptive deals have been announced since Skadden’s capitulation. On April 1^st, Willkie Farr made a deal at the apparent going rate—$100 million in pro bono services. Its offense? Presumably hiring Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, in January. And the next day, April 2^nd, Milbank also announced a preemptive deal on the same terms. Milbank’s particular offense remains unclear, but it was probably the choice to hire Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under the Obama administration and loud Trump critic.

The Terms of the Deals and Why They Matter

You might think that Trump extorting tens of millions of dollars in pro bono work out of the Big Law firms who have chosen to bow down to him is about control, and you may be partially right. But he has another motive, one that is far more chilling. As I’d explained at the beginning, Big Law plays a pivotal role in holding our government accountable because it provides pro bono support to the nonprofits filing the lawsuits against that government. But Big Law firms only provide a fraction of their billable hours pro bono, so in addition to bullying Big Law firms into not representing those who would try to hold him accountable, Trump is also preventing those who bend the knee from engaging in that representation by monopolizing their pro bono time.

By doing some back of the envelope math (which is probably more scientific than the math used to calculate Trump’s tariffs), based on annual revenue and the typical Big Law pro bono commitment (3% of all billable hours), the firms that struck deals with Trump would typically spend between $40 million (Willkie Farr) and $90 million (Skadden) in billable hours on pro bono work per year. The timing of the pro bono “donations” (ahem, bribes) the Big Law firms agreed to hasn’t been made public, but Trump could feasibly keep Skadden and Paul Weiss’s pro bono time completely tied up for the next year and Willkie Farr and Milbank’s for two or more years. Trump has successfully pursued two tactics to take these Big Law firms out of the fight for our democracy.

What We Can Do About It

The good news is that not all of Big Law is bending the knee. Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale have all gone to court to fight, despite the risks to their businesses. And, in the broader legal community, we’ve seen a positive response as well. More than 50 bar associations, 80 law school deans, 400 former Skadden associates, 80 Harvard Law School professors, 90 former Paul Weiss associates, 600 Big Law associates, and 70 UVA School of Law professors have all signed letters condemning Trump’s actions. And more than 500 law firms recently joined an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie.

Unfortunately though, not a single top 25 Big Law firm was among those who signed the amicus brief. Like GOP members of Congress, the Big Tech bros, and other major players in business, Big Law has, for the most part, bent the knee instead of standing up for what they know is right. As Winston Churchill once explained it, these cowards are appeasers, “feed[ing] a crocodile, hoping it will eat them last.”

And so, while the appeasers feed the crocodile, it is up to us to stand with Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and those in the legal field who have voiced their support for their brave colleagues. Because we see what the appeasers refuse to—that feeding the crocodile will only succeed in speeding up our ultimate destruction. We must take a stand now, before the crocodile grows too big to fight, before it’s too late to pull our country back from the brink of authoritarianism. Together, we can.