Trump Declares War On Lawyers

Written By Leeja Miller

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Transcript:

The Trump administration is willing to attack anything that gets in the way of its agenda, but its prime target in the 2 months since Trump took office has been lawyers. Lawyers and judges represent the rule of law, and those pesky laws are getting in the way of Trump doing whatever he wants to do. Trump knows this, his advisors and lackeys know this, and they are doing everything in their power to intimidate, defraud, and disbar any lawyer who gets in their way. Today, we’re talking about Trump’s all out war on lawyers, because it truly represents an existential threat to this country. Let’s get into it.

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There is so much happening so fast these days, and Trump's attacks on lawyers and law firms is no different.

This article from Democracy Now caught my eye with the headline “Trump Rescinds Order Targeting Law Firm After It Agrees to Provide $40M in Legal Services” – obviously, um, concerning, so it really grabbed my attention.

Using the Ground News browser extension, it’s helpful to see that this news source has a left leaning bias. I really love this extension because it provides context, and I can see how other sources are framing the story by clicking full coverage.

On the Ground News website you can see that there are 139 sources covering this topic

Among them, left leaning Rolling Stone uses the headline: “‘Betrayal of the Legal Profession’: Lawyers Are Dismayed at Firm Bowing to Trump’" while the far right The Post Millennial frames it as: "Dem firm Paul Weiss vows to adopt political neutrality, cut DEI after Trump threatens security clearance" as though capitulating to a dictator is “politically neutral.” These are very different takes on the same story, and it's a clear example of how consuming news from only one perspective can limit your understanding of a situation.

This is where Ground News comes in - and why I've been using them for over a year. Today’s partner Ground News is an app and website that offers tools to help you critically analyze the news you read, providing context to understand the full picture. For example, I can see each publication's factuality rating, as well as the overall factuality ratings of publications discussing this story, so I know which is more trustworthy. And I can see who owns which publication, and that the overall ownership skews more towards media conglomerates than independent news outlets.

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Yesterday, in an absolutely unhinged executive order, Trump took aim at his latest target: the elite law firm WilmerHale in an order titled “Addressing Risks from WilmerHale.” It starts off saying “My Administration is committed to addressing the significant risks associated with law firms, particularly so-called “Big Law” firms, that engage in conduct detrimental to critical American interests.” It goes on to accuse WilmerHale of “abusing its pro bono practice” saying “WilmerHale engages in obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends, supports efforts to discriminate on the basis of race, backs the obstruction of efforts to prevent illegal aliens from committing horrific crimes and trafficking deadly drugs within our borders, and furthers the degradation of the quality of American elections, including by supporting efforts designed to enable noncitizens to vote. Moreover, WilmerHale itself discriminates against its employees based on race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws, including through the use of race-based “targets.”” It specifically mentions Robert Mueller, who worked as an attorney for WilmerHale before being named by Trump’s own attorney general as special counsel to investigate russian collusion in Trump’s first presidential campaign. After his special counsel post was finished, Mueller returned to WilmerHale and then retired in 2021. And now, half a decade later, Trump is issuing this specific, targeted order against WilmerHale to punish the firm for its ties to Robert Mueller. Full stop. It is political retribution not even masquerading as anything it is literally just a targeted punishment wherein the most powerful person in the country is targeting an individual for doing his job and a firm for taking cases representing things he doesn’t agree with. To understand more fully why this is so absolutely fucking unhinged, I think it’s worth taking a moment for me to get on my soap box and rant about Big Law, because it’s a world I was a part of, albeit incredibly briefly.

I went to law school in Boston where WilmerHale is one of the tippy top law firms people dream of working at, and I have friends who managed to land a position there after law school. I took a position back in Minneapolis at a different firm because it turns out Boston kinda sucks, sorry, and I love living in Minneapolis, but that’s a separate story. ANYWAY, “Big Law” refers to the large corporate law firms that usually have more than one office, over 100 attorneys working for them, and pays their lawyers the “big law” market rate. There is an established pay scale for big law attorneys that varies depending on where in the country you live but on the coasts where the pay is the highest the rate in 2024 started at $225,000. So your first year out of law school your pay is $225,000 and it goes up from there. That is kind of how big law is defined, and the high salary and prestige that comes with working for a big law firm makes the spots incredibly coveted and competitive. It also means that, for better or for worse, these firms attract top legal talent. So we have a president targeting a firm that is home to some of the brightest legal minds in this country. Not only that, he seems to be targeting them specifically for their pro bono legal work. Which is also insane. Let me explain.

So while those huge salaries sound really flashy, they come with insane amounts of work, upwards of 2200 billable hours requirements per year, which works out to roughly 50 hours per week where you need to be doing work clients can be billed for. Unfortunately, at LEAST a third of the work you do is not billable, because there’s a lot of admin there’s a lot of other things like it is very hard to sit and do 10 hours of purely billable work every single day, the reality is that for every 10 hours of billable work you’re doing, you’re likely doing 5 additional hours of non-billable work. Meaning these lawyers are working 80 hour weeks easily. On top of that, there is an expectation that law firms contribute a certain number of their hours to pro bono work, meaning doing work that is unpaid. It’s a corporate social responsibility thing, you can get credit for it towards your continuing legal education credits you need to maintain your license, and most firms allow you to count a certain small number of your billable hours towards your pro bono work. Not a lot, we’re talking maybe 50 of the 2200 billable hours you do can be pro bono. But pro bono work frankly also in my experience is the thing big law associates do to feel like they still have a soul. Because they can work on the things they actually care about and that make them feel like their law degree is actually helpful for the world. And a lot of law firms take great pride in the work they do pro bono, it often includes assisting in habeas corpus petitions, helping the wrongfully convicted seek justice, it can involve assisting low income folks with immigration paperwork and proceedings, it can involve representing indigent clients in housing court to help them fight their landlords. A lot can be said about the soullessness of big law, and I only lasted a year before I had a full and complete mental breakdown like burn out beyond anything I’d ever experienced, but the lawyers that do last often also are doing some good for the world through their pro bono practice.

So the fact that Trump is characterizing this work as limiting constitutional freedoms and undermining “bedrock American principles” is actually unhinged. FURTHER, these are BIG law firms, hence the name… big law. To target an entire firm for the practice of one of its attorneys is actually fucking bat shit. These firms practice an incredibly wide breadth of law, everything from estate planning to white collar defense to advising medical companies on health regulations to helping big pharma patent medicines to helping companies obtain H1B visas for their employees to advising businesses on mergers and acquisitions to writing major real estate transactions and literally everything in between. These firms often have dozens of practice groups with hundreds or sometimes thousands of lawyers each with their own individual practices serving a huge array of clients, many of whom never interact with each other. And now, because Trump has decided to punish one man, Robert Mueller, for doing the job Trump’s own AG hired him to do, this executive order now bars every single attorney in that firm from having security clearances, bans government contractors from working with the firm, bans WilmerHale attorneys from accessing federal buildings or from engaging with government employees, and bars the federal government from hiring employees of WilmerHale. This means that attorneys working on federal court cases may be barred from entering the courts where their cases are pending, so they would not be able to represent clients in federal court. It means anyone who works there are has worked there is barred from getting a job at the federal government, and going from big law to a position at a US attorney’s office is a very common career path. Which means it removes some of the best and brightest attorneys from the potential hiring pool for future federal jobs, which truly only hurts the federal government. It makes WilmerHale’s existence and ability to represent its clients really really difficult, in some cases impossible. All in retribution for its association with an enemy of Donald Trump. And that’s the entire point, to bring them to their knees so they have no choice but to bend to his will.

And it makes sense that Trump would be preoccupied with attacking major law firms. He has spent his entire life fielding lawsuits or filing lawsuits, usually against other wealthy people or major businesses that were likely being represented by one of a handful of the most elite private law firms in the country. And Trump has lost time and again because he likes to break the law and he likes to do things that hurt other people, but he hates when he gets caught and punished for it. And after such a long history of experiencing these lawsuits, he’s gotten really good at knowing how to muck up the legal process so that every lawsuit against him is like pulling fucking teeth. He knows how to get his lawyers to make life hell for anyone who dares to get involved in a lawsuit with him. But he’s still lost many many lawsuits. Because he was constrained by the letter of the law, no matter how long he managed to get his lawyers to drag their feet. Now, as president, everyone around him is deadset on building him up to be above the law. And now that the law no longer applies to him, he gets to exact the revenge he’s been wanting on all the lawyers that he’s had to face in court and lose to. He couldn’t do it when the laws applied to him, so he needs to go around them and try to write his own through these executive orders. And he’s not even TRYING to come up with pretextual grounds for persecuting his political opponents anymore. And that is really concerning, because it’s clear that he knows he doesn’t have to because he can largely do what he wants. And so he’s making life hell for these law firms until they bow to his will.

According to the New York Times, WilmerHale issued a statement defending Robert Mueller’s character and saying the firm had “a longstanding tradition of representing a wide range of clients, including in matters against administrations of both parties.” The firm added, “We look forward to pursuing all appropriate remedies to this unlawful order.” I am hopeful that WilmerHale sticks to its guns in defending itself from Trump’s attacks, because a number of other lawyers and law firms have not done so. This latest executive order is just one of many attacks against lawyers and law firms that Trump has made since taking office.

At the beginning of March, Trump did the same thing to another big law firm, Perkins Coie, as retribution for its work on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, removing its lawyers’ security clearances and barring them from federal buildings. Last week, he issued the same executive order against law firm Jenner & Block as retribution against its attorney Andrew Weissmann who served as lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s case. And he did the same thing back in February to the firm Covington & Burling as retribution for helping to provide legal advice to special counsel and channel Daddy Jack Smith during his investigation and filing of federal indictments against Trump. And again, earlier this month Trump issued another executive order aimed at the firm Paul Weiss as retribution for a pro bono lawsuit it brought against January 6th insurrectionists, and for its hiring of attorney Mark Pomerantz who headed a case against him in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Perkins Coie acknowledged that in just the few days after Trump’s executive order against them, the firm lost significant revenue as clients began jumping ship. And Paul Weiss didn’t even put up a fight, instead meeting with Trump in the White House and penning a deal in which Paul Weiss committed to doing $40 million dollars in pro bono legal work for causes of Trump’s choice. Brad Karp, Paul Weiss’ managing partner, defended the deal saying it was in the firm’s clients’ best interests as many clients had said they’d need to drop them in order to avoid being seen as an adversary to the President. The move was roundly criticized as a judge had already ruled one of Trump’s other orders was unconstitutional, Paul Weiss didn’t even attempt to put up a fight, and it sends a signal to the administration that these firms will fold easily with each new executive order. It makes the entire rest of the legal community vulnerable, but Brad Karp, under pressure from the business law practice of the firm, instead succumbed to greed and cowardice, as elites and lawyers did for Hitler in 1930s Germany, by kissing the ring in a futile attempt at self preservation, the rest of us be damned.

Additionally, in a memo published earlier this month, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to file ethics challenges against any lawyer they deem has brought “meritless” cases, including in immigration courts, and go after law firm partners for the actions of junior attorneys. So not only is he attacking firms and stripping them of federal government access, he’s directing his lackeys to actively attempt to strip the licenses from lawyers who go against him.

Earlier this month, a federal judge barred much of the executive order against Perkins Coie from taking effect, but much of the damage has already been done. The firm has lost revenue and it has been put on notice, along with literally every other law firm in the country, that they better toe the line and think twice before taking on any clients or filing any lawsuits that may put it at risk of being targeted by Trump. And that is a huge problem. Remember how I said private law firm lawyers provide a lot of pro bono support? To immigrants, for example. To non-profits pushing desegregation efforts. To filing habeas petitions for the wrongfully accused. And they are also some of the best lawyers in the country. The aim of these executive orders is not just to exact revenge on the law firms for harboring lawyers who wronged Trump. It is so much bigger than that. Because as I’ve been screaming for months, it is lawyers and judges who are providing the final check on Trump’s power grabs. It is the rule of law that stands as his greatest obstacle now. Lawyers and judges enforce the law. By effectively barring the lawyers from every single major law firm in the country from practicing in federal courts or filing lawsuits they think he might not like out of fear of retribution, he is limiting how many lawyers are available to file the lawsuits to begin with. He’s effectively limiting all future lawsuits against him, as anyone in his crosshairs is going to have an impossible time finding legal counsel willing to stick their necks out to represent them. The New York Times quoted Daniel C. Richman, law professor at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor, saying ““If you’re a political enemy, you really need the best representation when the government comes after you for who you are. … Chilling the lawyers who represent those people hurts the rule of law because when the government can’t be legally opposed, the law provides no protections to anyone and you start to live in an autocracy.” He doesn’t even have to rewrite the laws if there’s no one there to enforce them.

This, combined with his calls for impeaching judges like Judge James Boasberg who is overseeing both the venezuelan immigrant planes case AND the Signal message leak, is the way he breaks down these final barriers to his power. And it’s not just the lawyers in private firms that he’s targeting. He’s also intent on removing the lawyers working within the government that will not bend to his will.

The Justice Department was quickly cleared of its top ranking career lawyers, the Office of Legal Counsel was not given opportunity to vet draft executive orders and has been given no acting chief, other top lawyers at government agencies have also been fired in an attempt to remove the potential that someone might step in and say hey what you’re doing is actually against the law. And that is very very much by design. A video obtained by ProPublica shows Russel Vought, key architect behind Project 2025 who now oversees the Office of Management and Budget, giving a speech in 2023 about his think tank, which was in the process of developing new legal standards for a future Trump presidency. [“Most of the time in the Oval Office we would put forward some, some policy solution, and then we’d have the lawyers come in and say: ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that. That would overturn this precedent. There’s a state law against that. … We’re trying to build a shadow Office of Legal Counsel so that when a future president says, ‘What legal authorities do I need to shut down the riots?’ we want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do.’”] It seems Russel Vought has been given every opportunity to make his wildest dreams come true.

In February, the Trump administration fired three of the top lawyers in the armed forces, also known as judge advocates general, or JAGs. Those lawyers are in place to advise military leaders on the legality of their military operations. Like hey does this violate anyone’s constitutional rights? Is this perhaps a human rights violation? The lawyers are there to tell them yay or nay. Fox news host turned unqualified secretary of defense Pete Hegseth defended the firings in a Fox News interview by saying they were removed because they existed as “roadblocks.” When asked follow up questions by reporters later, he doubled down saying that JAGs represent “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks summed it up well in a tweet, saying “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.” Or perhaps, as noted by The New York Times, Shakespeare said it best in King Henry the sixth (part 2): “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Or maybe it was Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens when he wrote, in a 1985 opinion, “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

And speaking of Georgetown Law, the Trump administration took aim at that law school, in an attempt likely to put all law schools on notice, when the Interim US Attorney in DC, Ed Martin, sent Georgetown a letter threatening to stop hiring graduates from Georgetown law if its dean failed to abolish the school’s diversity programs. In a beautifully written, scathing letter back, the Georgetown dean, William Treanor, a brilliant scholar of constitutional law, reminded Ed Martin about the whole First Amendment thing that bars the government from controlling how a private institution sets its curriculum. The letter is an excellent example of how deans, law firms, and others can push back and stand up to the Trump administration, and how they must do so in order to uphold the rule of law and not allow the Trump administration to bully them into submission. However it’s one thing for the dean of a private law school to do so, it's another thing for a large law firm reliant on paying clients to risk its existence by standing up to a government hell bent on annihilating every lawyer and law firm that doesn’t comply.

But I think they should do it anyway. Because whether they stand up to Trump or whether they comply, the reality is that this is a larger existential threat, in which the rule of law, lawyers, and judges, is all that remains of the bulwark holding what’s left of this democracy together. If they capitulate, that represents an existential threat for the republic, which represents an existential threat for all our institutions, public and private, including private law firms who will have to try to operate in a country where law doesn’t really exist anymore. If they stand up to him, he may continue to exert pressure, it may mean downsizing or perhaps the end of some law firms that can’t withstand the reputational damage and threat to their entire business. In both scenarios, the very existence of these firms is in question. In the latter scenario, however, the existential threat would be met with opposition, bravery, courage, and an unwillingness to set aside the rule of law in order to save face. In both scenarios, all that’s left to lose is literally everything, their choice is to take it lying down or actually stand up for something. But don’t just take my word for it.

Rachel Cohen, a Harvard Law graduate and associate attorney at the Big Law firm Skadden publicly resigned earlier this month, emailing her resignation letter to the entire firm and posting it on LinkedIn. In it, she wrote she had tried over the past weeks to get quote “the firm and broader industry to admit that we are in the throes of early-stage authoritarianism and that we are uniquely positioned to halt it.” She had attempted to get law firm associates to sign an open letter attacking Trump’s “all-out attack aimed at dismantling rule of law norms.” She goes on to write “The firm has been given time and opportunity to do the right thing. Thus far, we have not. This is a moment that demands urgency. … We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here.” Many federal judges, government attorneys, and non-profit lawyers are standing up to the tyranny actively taking place in this country with bravery and selflessness. Given my personal experience in big law I don’t have a super high opinion of the bravery and selflessness of the types of lawyers who manage to scramble their way to the top of large law firms, but I hope for all our sakes they choose to fight, cuz the five alarm fire has been burning, and they’re the ones who get to decide whether to turn on the hoses or sit and watch the whole house burn.

And if you’d like to support my work, I recommend joining me over on Patreon where I launched the Why, America? Co-Learning Lab at the beginning of this year, a learning community having discussions and making connections, along with a monthly syllabus curated by me. All year we’ll be covering topics under the umbrella theme of “Eat the Rich: Building Solidarity in the New Gilded Age.” March’s topic is how billionaires bought the government. This is all hosted over on Patreon, which is linked down below. If you’re interested, please join us. Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Wednesday all about SIGNALGATE.

Leeja Miller
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