Trump targets Big Law, and Big Law appears intimidated
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For weeks now, President Donald Trump has been issuing memos and executive orders targeting big law firms. Here's how he laid it out on Fox News. We have a lot of law firms that we're going to be

Going after because they were very dishonest people. They were very, very dishonest. They could go point after point after point. Trump's moves suspended firm security clearances, prohibited government contractors from retaining the firms and even barred their employees from federal buildings. He also issued an executive memo threatening sanctions on any law firms that pursue, quote, fraud.

frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States. Here's how Professor Timothy Zick at William & Mary Law School describes it all. This is an effort to target and retaliate against law firms that were doing lawful work, advocacy on behalf of their clients. Each of the firms had fallen afoul of Trump in one way or another. Perkins Coie, for example, represented Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.

and had a hand in the creation of the infamous Trump-Russia dossier. With another firm, Paul Weiss, the complaints included the rehiring of an attorney who had left to help prosecute a case against Trump. In court, the Trump administration has argued that the president has the authority to take action against companies if he believes they can't be trusted with national secrets.

University of Pennsylvania law professor Claire Finkelstein says it appears clear the president has a different goal. I think if you look at the purpose of the executive orders, it's to intimidate professionals, to intimidate the legal profession from engaging in professional activities that go against Donald Trump and the current administration.

Perkins Coie fought the order targeting it and won a temporary stay. A federal judge said the order likely violates the firm's First, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. One of the firm's targeted poll wise cut a deal with the White House in order to have an executive order rescinded. Other law firms have stayed silent.

And that doesn't sit well with Rachel Cohen. I am forced to hope that our lack of response to the Trump administration's attacks on our peers is rooted in feelings of fear and powerlessness as opposed to tacit agreement or desire to maximize profit. She was, until last week, a lawyer at another big firm, Skadden Arps. On Friday, she submitted her resignation in a staff-wide email, which she later read on TikTok. We do not have time. It is now or never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here.

Consider this. Rachel Cohen says Trump's pressuring of big, private law firms is part of a broader effort to reshape the American justice system in his favor, and that so far, big law isn't standing up for itself. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

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It's Consider This from NPR. Rachel Cohen had been speaking out about Trump's executive orders before her resignation on social media and in an open letter. So the first thing I asked her was, what was the tipping point? The breaking point was a combination of two things. One, the fact that Trump was going to resign.

The first was feeling confident that I had done everything in my power other than resigning. But what was ultimately the triggering event was Paul Weiss's decision to capitulate to the Trump administration to get him to rescind an executive order that he had issued against them.

I think it's important to note that the Paul Weiss executive order was issued after a judge had already issued a temporary restraining order for a very, very similar executive order levied against the law firm Perkins Coie. In a normal functioning American legal dynamic, you would never issue a near identical executive order to one that had just been functionally enjoined. And a law firm certainly would not then refuse to fight that executive order.

I just want to take a second to spell out some of the details of the Paul Weiss case for people who may not be as familiar with it as you are. President Trump levied this executive order to strip the firm of security clearances and government contracts, in part because it rehired a lawyer who'd left the firm to prosecute a case against Trump. And then Paul Weiss agreed to concessions to get the executive order rescinded. That included $40 million in pro bono work and cases aligning with the administration's agenda. Spell out for me why that is so troubling to you.

There's two pieces of the settlement that troubled me, and you've identified them. The first is this agreement to provide the $40 million in pro bono legal services. And so you have associates at a firm that has always held itself out to be kind of at the cutting edge of important pro bono work and justice work in addition to their billable obligations.

You have these associates that are now being told that their firm is going to provide millions of dollars worth of free legal support to the Trump administration to advance its aims. So that's the first thing. But the second thing that troubled me is that they committed to a total evaluation by an outside evaluator to be agreed between Paul Weiss and the Trump administration of their hiring practices. I have many friends in the industry that expressed fear of disqualification.

doxing or being pushed out as associates who are non-white within this industry. If Paul Weiss is giving him this, and it makes me certain that other firms are going to give him this, I think I have to trust that they are and be proactive here. Yeah.

Now, Paul Weiss took in over $2.6 billion in revenue last year, according to Law 360, and its chairman said in an internal email, even given that figure, I'm quoting, it was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the administration. Hearing that, what does that say about the state of the legal profession at this moment?

I think if I hear that and I'm a client, I'm questioning why I'm paying $3,000 an hour for a law firm that doesn't think it can win a legal battle over an executive order that has functionally already been enjoined. In your view, what do you think President Trump is trying to do in picking this fight with big law? I think that picking a fight with big law is one prong of his multi-pronged attack on the judiciary system. He's intimidating judges. He is ignoring judges' orders and deporting people over them.

And I think that his goal here is to kneecap effective pro bono representation and public interest representation challenging him. The Trump administration is telling us, I don't care how the courts decide, but also it's even easier for me if there aren't lawyers willing to go there in the first place.

When we talk about big law, we're really talking about a group of a whole lot of different firms who not only have to compete for big cases, but who would also have to defend themselves individually in what would be costly and time-consuming battles. I know that there are some open letters and there's talk of amicus briefs, but apart from rhetoric, is there anything that you see that law firms can do collectively here?

I think that the first step collectively is going to be rhetoric. It's going to be putting out a statement saying we're committed to continued representation, whether it is representation that the Trump administration views as supportive of it or adverse to it. But then the next step of collective action has to be putting their money where their mouth is. I'm not focused on that piece at this moment because right now I can't even get their mouth there.

That was attorney Rachel Cohen. Rachel, thank you. Thank you so much. This episode was produced by Mia Venkat and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watanonan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. You also heard reporting from NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas at the top of this episode. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.

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