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I come from a big family of lawyers. My late grandfather, when he came home from the army after World War II, he used the GI Bill to get a free law degree from St. John's University here in Queens, New York. My dad's a lawyer at a big firm. Two of my brothers are lawyers. I'm married to a lawyer. All to say, my experience with lawyers is that they tend not to give up. They really don't like to let things go.

Which is why it's kind of surprising to me that the Trump administration has been so successful at pushing around some of our country's most prominent lawyers. These are the law firms collectively known simply as Big Law. The top 20, 25 law firms in the country. That's Ankush Kordori, a former federal prosecutor at the DOJ. Before that, a former big law attorney. Now, he's a senior writer at Politico magazine.

These really, really large law firms, mostly based in New York and D.C., with offices all over the country and sometimes all over the world. Sort of these large, large thousand-plus attorney firms. In the months since Donald Trump began his second term, big law has found itself in his crosshairs. And now? I did not foresee anything like this series of executive orders, much less these settlements that have now emerged in their wake. These executive orders started coming in soon after Trump's inauguration.

In late February, he began revoking security clearances for Covington & Burling, a firm that gave free legal services to former special prosecutor Jack Smith. When he signed the order, Trump made no secret about his motivations. Hold it. This is a good one. Is everybody listening? Deranged Jack Smith. We're going to call it the Deranged Jack Smith scandal.

Signing for Bill. Go ahead. One law firm that provided pro bono legal services to the special counsel's office under Jack Smith's leadership was Covington & Burling.

And that was just the start. In the months since, Trump has issued executive orders against some of the biggest firms in the country. While a handful of these firms are fighting Trump's executive orders in court, at least nine of them have made deals with the president. In an effort to try to get Trump to back off, these firms have promised to spend money on free legal work—that's pro bono, as they say—for issues that were supposed to be of mutual interest between big law and the White House.

But over the past week, Trump has hinted that he sees this collective $1 billion pot as more of a personal legal fund. Would it surprise you if, say, a year from now, you saw your former law firm, Paul Weiss, working on behalf of, say, the coal industry, or if you saw Skadden defending various Trump officials in court?

You know, several weeks ago, that would have been a pretty unthinkable proposition, having these firms being put directly to use on Trump's behalf to further his interests. But over the last week, that has shifted a little bit. And I think that possibility has sort of moved into the realm of something we may actually see. Would you say that you're a Star Wars guy, Ankhish? I like the original trilogy, and I'll leave it there. So this might be a little on the nose, but I can't stop thinking about this one scene from Empire Strikes Back.

Lando Calrissian, he's running this independent city. It's called Cloud City. It's this for-profit business place. It's not political. He's interested in making money. He's not interested in rebels or empire. And at one point, Luke Skywalker and the gang, they head to Cloud City to hide out. And of course, Darth Vader shows up. He demands that Lando Calrissian hand over his friends. Calrissian. Calrissian.

Take the princess and the Wookiee to my ship. And Lando's like, we had a deal. And then Vader just goes like, without even looking back. I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. Oh.

Right. Like this whole thing just feels like a huge shakedown to me, is it not? I mean, functionally, certainly it is. And even the structure of these settlements, and I kind of don't even like calling them settlements, to be honest, but even the structure of these deals legally resemble a shakedown. And in that respect, you know, I'm talking about words like extortion and bribery under federal criminal law.

Now, obviously, nobody's going to get prosecuted over this because it's Trump at the helm of this. But your intuition is correct. And it actually does have some real grounding in federal law. It's not just, I think, colloquialism in this context. Today on the show, how big law got itself into some big trouble. I'm Rob Gunther, sitting in for Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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So several weeks ago, probably about a month ago at this point, Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting first Covington and Burling and then Perkins Coie. And those executive orders did several things. One, they purported to revoke the security clearances of any attorneys who held security clearances at those firms.

Two, purported to prohibit the lawyers at those firms from entering federal property, which would include not just federal offices, but federal courthouses. And three, questioned whether the firm's clients' contracts with the government might also be in jeopardy as a result of those clients' relationship with the firms.

So those were the sort of the three principal sanctions that Trump imposed in those orders. And then we've had a larger number of firms, beginning with Paul Weiss, entering into these deals with Trump to get out from under the executive orders or to preempt executive orders that may have targeted them. So Trump is issuing these orders. Why is he issuing these orders? What are these specific charges against these firms and how does he justify or explain them?

So this is a very good question because it's not altogether clear. But let's start with what he's saying. What they have said is that these firms have been undermining the government by litigating against them in various ways. They have criticized the firm's DEI commitments, which were never very strong to begin with. I think that one's a very obvious pretext there.

So those have been like among the criticisms that they have publicly levied. But, you know, in the first series of executive orders, you could discern a pattern, which was that the firms that he had targeted either had worked for the Democratic Party or an affiliate or hired or at one point employed partners who had worked on either a Trump prosecution or investigation.

So, for instance, Wilmer Harrell had Robert Mueller, Jenner and Block, which was also targeted, had Andrew Weissman, who was a deputy to Robert Mueller. Paul Weiss had Mark Pomeranz, who worked for a while on the Manhattan DA's investigation into Trump.

And Perkins Coie, of course, represented the Democratic Party throughout the 2016 election. And they eventually engaged on behalf of the party or picked up the engagement of Fusion GPS, which was the sort of, I don't know,

I don't know what you really call it, sort of opposition research outfit type thing that... I mean, can we say the P-tape at this point? That's what this whole thing was, right? Yeah, that spun up the Steele dossier and the P-tape allegations. So, I mean, it's just, it's all personal for Trump, right? It's just, this is all grounded in his personal beefs. I mean, he has been upset about the 2016 election. Since 2016, clearly, they tried and failed to prosecute one of the lawyers at Perkins Coie. But since then, it's become less obvious what the connection is. And I think...

It honestly just seems to be that the Trump administration and the people in the White House have this very broad antipathy toward what they perceive as big law or white collar law firms. And in part, it seems to be because they feel like these firms did not welcome Trump administration officials after the first term, which is not exactly a very high minded rationale.

When these deals were first starting to be made, what was the general understanding about what was being agreed to? Because to me, it sounded like, OK, we'll do a bunch of free pro bono work. But now it seems like the expectations might be a little different on both sides. Right. So, yes, initially, sort of the first real inkling we got was in the form of Trump sending out through two social a set of terms that he had purportedly agreed upon with Brad Karp in order to get out from under the executive order that had targeted Paul Weiss.

Brad Karp is the chairman of Paul Weiss. And Karp agreed on behalf of Paul Weiss to commit $40 million worth of pro bono work toward the administration's initiatives. It was very, very vague. It seems to be the case that the firms themselves thought they weren't really giving Trump anything because they would be able to say, well, these are commitments that are already in line with the way we select cases and our pro bono objectives. It seems to be that that was their hope.

Since then, however, over the last week in particular, Trump has kind of been publicly taunting them by suggesting in various contexts that he may take those commitments and force these or try to force these firms to work for the administration and things like negotiating trade deals or the Venezuelan deportations of Venezuelans, things like that. And

you know, it's not clear how serious he is, but if he pushes that, we could be headed toward a very remarkable situation and a very awkward encounter. Yeah, a lot of this came out in reporting last week. And it's basically, if you take all these agreements in total, Trump seems to be thinking that he has like a billion dollar war chest. So a billion dollars is the collective sum that these law firms have agreed to. And

The New York Times in their reporting, they talked to one lawyer. They didn't name them. But this lawyer is directly involved in the negotiations and said that Trump's comments suggesting that he could use this as a personal legal fund, they might actually unravel these deals.

Yeah, we shall see. I mean, they might. I think it would put these firms in a very, very awkward position. I mean, working on behalf of the federal government would create all sorts of complications, including complications with their ethical commitments to their clients, including clients that are adverse to the government. It could unravel them.

But we shall see. I mean, frankly, the one thing that we've learned from these firms, which I knew, but many people have been surprised to learn, and I understand why, is that they're pretty craven and cowardly. And they will say things like that anonymously to the New York Times. But would they ever attach their name to a statement saying, like, we're not going to do this? That's not going to happen. So that already is a bad sign.

But, you know, look, Trump likes to taunt people. You know, when he's got them down, he likes to keep his foot on their necks. He could just be messing with them. Who knows? But I do think, you know, one of the things he's done pretty effectively is really humiliated them. And...

You know, he's been not just talking about like, we're going to put this money to use for the administration, but you sort of alluded to it. He's been talking about this in very personal terms saying, oh, they've given me this money. You know, I've got a billion dollars now that they've committed to me to use. I've got this huge war chest. It's really, really quite striking. And I think it's quite humiliating for these law firms, I must say, who savvy, you know, fancy themselves as very savvy and sophisticated litigators and negotiators and, you

The notion that they were going to like outmaneuver Trump this easily, I think was farcical, quite honestly. And they're the ones who are being made to look like fools at the moment. How are the firms that gave in to Trump explaining their choice? Like, how are they doing it internally? How are they doing it externally?

Internally, what they're saying is basically that they didn't really give Trump much, that the commitments they made to him were already in line with their values. That's the claim internally. And also internally that they were going to suffer a potential existential crisis. That at least is the claim that Brad Karp made internally and Paul Weiss. I don't take either of those claims particularly seriously, nor do I think all the partners, even at Paul Weiss, take those claims seriously. Externally, they have tried to keep their heads down and not say much at all.

and keep quiet and hope the whole thing blows over. - I mean, do you buy that argument that the firms would go out of business if they didn't sign on? - No, I do not. And honestly, I find the argument a little obnoxious.

Paul Weiss is more profitable than like 99.5% of the law firms in this country. Brad Karp makes tens of millions of dollars a year. The average profit per partner at Paul Weiss, which is among the highest in the world, is $6.5 million per partner. So could they have survived like a 50% cut? Could the partners have lived off $3 million a year? I would hope so. Maybe they don't think so, but we don't have to take their claims seriously.

On the other side, there have been a few associates who have at least made news coverage when they left, when they decided to leave these firms, citing a moral stance. How widespread is this mindset within these firms at the lower level? You know, I think that discontent is very real and it's widespread. However, you know, we have seen several people leave and then sort of, you know,

emerge in the media, but it's a paltry number in the scheme of things. I mean, what's really happening here, the actual takeaway here is that 99.99999% of the lawyers at these firms are staying. Given that, I'm trying to understand the existential threat here for those firms. They're not worried about people leaving. They're not worried about their financial security. Are they maybe looking further into the future? Are they trying to like

hedge their bets like, okay, well, if Trump is out of office, we'll be in a good spot. And if Trump just keeps going, we'll always be around in some way to make money. Well, they will always be around. You can pretty much guarantee that. Even during the financial crisis, these firms largely all survived with very little change. I think the explanation, it's a simple one and it's an unsatisfying one. I think they didn't want to make less money.

We'll be back after a quick break.

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To understand why, Unkish says it's useful to focus in on the example of one firm. Here's what actually happened with the deal with Brad Karp and Paul Weiss and Trump. Trump had imposed a collection of sanctions on Paul Weiss.

including, for instance, that he had pulled all the security clearances for anyone at the firm that held those clearances. Once that happened, Brad Karp went in and, according to the reporting, came up with this proposal to offer Trump this pro bono work at this sort of value of $40 million. I don't know how they came up with the number, but that this was a framework that sort of Karp had come up with and pursued himself to try to get a quick deal with the White House. Now,

Ordinarily, when someone pays a government official to undertake an official act, which would be, for instance, giving back security clearances, we would call that bribery under federal law or extortion because someone is paying a government official to undertake an official act to benefit them.

Now, it does not matter that the money that was paid by the firms went to a third party rather than Trump, although Trump characterizes them as payments to him anyway. And also, you know, if someone in this sort of setting is the quote unquote victim, but they came up with the idea that.

to engage in this transaction, they can have exposure under federal criminal law for conspiring to engage in extortion and aiding and abetting extortion, even though they are the quote unquote victim. Now, you might be wondering, why is that a good rule? Like, that seems kind of unfair to the victim. Well, the best reason is because you want to make sure that more people don't follow suit and engage in the same corrupt practice.

And the other thing I would just say before we go down further is I think it's useful to think about like how we would interpret these events if we read about them going on in another country.

If foreign correspondents were reporting about the wealthiest lawyers in some Eastern European country going to the president, offering up tens of millions of dollars in concessions in order to remain on the government's good side, we would call that state sanctioned bribery an extortion. We would not be mincing words about it.

One thing that's striking me from this whole conversation since the start, the law firms are worrying about trying to keep their bottom line solvent. They're trying to figure out how to do business in this landscape regardless of who's in charge. But

My understanding is that a lot of these firms are going to be hired by people who have to do work in front of the government, against the government. And so my question is, in the future, for these firms that are deciding to make these agreements, how are they hoping to attract clients that might have business in front of the government if they've already shown a willingness to sort of give up as soon as the government tells them to?

You know, look, here's what their best spin, I think, and what I think even the clients would in many senses understand, which is that when you're a large company and these places work for large companies, you often are facing the government. Sometimes you're facing unfair allegations. But the question of how you resolve those allegations, whether you fight or not fight, is a sensitive one. It's one about risk tolerance. It's one about how you assess the merits and the probabilities and the financial exposure.

And these firms advise clients to settle matters, including with the federal government, quite regularly and negotiate settlements like that. Sometimes the advice is to take it to court for various reasons. Sometimes, often, the advice is to settle it if you have the opportunity. And this all quite resembles how white-collar regulatory investigations work in practice. And I think it's no accident that these things have unfolded in that way and that they've unfolded that way in large part because the firms handle that type of business.

And if you take it a step further, I think the people that are worried about allowing this to continue, they're imagining some pretty big changes to law, to big law as a practice. Are there parties in the future that might have trouble finding representation? Do firms step back from pro bono work entirely? What are the bigger ramifications here?

Yeah. I mean, look, the clients that they work for are the largest interests in the country, right? I think there are partners now who bill up to $3,000 an hour. The average billable rate is like $1,000 an hour. You and I could not afford these firms if we needed them, right? We, people like you and me and people who are listening, we go to the 99% of other firms, regional firms, smaller local practitioners for our legal needs, right?

So when we're thinking about the impact of these deals on the legal profession, kind of writ large, I do think it's sort of concentrated to these elite firms, quote unquote elite firms, and their client base. And that, at least for paying work, this isn't going to affect the average person because the average person doesn't have access to these law firms anyway.

Now, I do think on the pro bono side, we could see some effects. But let me just underscore again, these firms do less pro bono work than they like to portray themselves as doing. What they do is very valuable. It is laudable, but it is a very small part of what they do.

I do think potentially we may see the firms slightly deterred from litigating against the Trump administration, although I think that effect was already somewhat in place. And I don't think Paul Weiss had been doing any of this pro bono litigation against Trump on the executive orders, whereas other firms had the ACLU and Democracy Forward are pursuing those cases and other nonprofits. I do think there could be a pretty tangible impact on pro bono representation for asylum cases.

for migrants who are applying for assignment because law firms do actually do a fair amount of work on that front because they're pretty good ways for junior associates to get experience litigating and the firms kind of use them that way. And I think there could be a chilling effect in that area.

So nine of these big firms have agreements with the Trump administration, but there are a few that have notably decided to fight back. How is that going for them? It's going well so far. I mean, they've managed to secure preliminary injunctions pretty early on. Those are not final determinations, but, you know, they're prevailing in the lower courts. And, you know, in terms of the business, yeah.

You know, at least outwardly, they're sort of putting on a pretty brave face. There has been some reporting. I think Perkins Coie itself has acknowledged that they've lost a fair amount of revenue as a result of the order. But for the most part, at least in the courts, they're faring pretty well so far.

Have they lost any of their big clients? It's my understanding that places like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, they're all sticking with Perkins so far. It does seem to be the case that these companies, at least the big clients, have been sticking with them. And I'm not surprised by that, to be honest. I think to some extent, you know,

The clients are general counsels at these firms. They're lawyers too. So the lawyers who hire these firms, you know, they understand these issues too. So my suspicion is that the general counsels at a lot of these places are themselves quite concerned. Actually, it's not even really a suspicion. A bunch of them, former general counsels, have put in amicus briefs of their own opposing these deals in pretty strong terms. And these are former general counsels from very, very large companies.

And my strong suspicion is that the current general counsels from a lot of large companies also share the view that these deals are quite problematic and that they don't want to aid and abet the destruction of these firms. Ankush, thank you so much for your time. I'm very grateful to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. Ankush Korduri is a senior writer at Politico magazine and a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department. Before that, he worked as an attorney at Paul Weiss. And that's the show.

What next is produced by Paige Osborne, Elena Schwartz, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Ethan Oberman. Ben Richmond is the Senior Director of Podcast Operations here at Slate. And I'm Rob Gunther, in for Mary Harris. You can find me on Blue Sky. I'm at 1RobGunther. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.

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