Law firms: Caving to White House pressure

A court hammer — The legal system is the one “obstacle between Trump and dictatorship”

(Image credit: Runstudio / Getty Images)

Big Law has already begun surrendering, said William Kristol in The Bulwark. President Trump this month targeted three major Democratic-leaning law firms for, essentially, destruction. By executive order, he terminated all federal contracts with the firms and any federal contractors employing them, meaning they’d lose all their clients. This “extraordinary diktat” seems clearly unconstitutional, and when one firm—Perkins Coie, which had represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign—fought it in court, it won a restraining order. But another firm, Paul Weiss, “chose capitulation,” cravenly agreeing to provide $40 million in pro bono services to Trump causes to get the order lifted. Paul Weiss had been targeted because its lawyers had investigated Trump’s business dealings and sued alleged Jan. 6 rioters, and its head, Brad Karp, said it faced an “existential crisis.” Yet knuckling under to extortion is no way to make it stop.

“I do recognize Karp’s plight,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. He has a fiduciary duty to his firm, and Trump’s order could have bankrupted it. Yet “Perkins Coie faced the same pressures and chose to fight,” which is not just principled but also pragmatic. Paul Weiss reduced itself to a puppet, existing at the mercy of a president who might renew his order on any pretext. Its meekness only emboldened Trump to strike again—this time targeting Jenner and Block, a firm that employed a lawyer who helped Robert Mueller investigate Trump’s Russia ties in 2017. Look, the Democrats really did engage in scandalous “lawfare abuses” during the past eight years, said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. But “Trump’s retribution is that he won the presidency” and got to fire the government officials who persecuted him. He doesn’t get to trample the Constitution to “destroy his enemies.”

The legal system is the one “obstacle between Trump and dictatorship,” said Frank Bowman in Slate, and he’s dismantling it piece by piece. He’s already undermined judges by defying court orders. Intimidating private law firms is the next step, and we desperately need attorneys to resist. But when Paul Weiss looked to its peers to stand with it against Trump, Karp says rival firms instead tried to poach his lawyers and clients. The profession is at a fatal juncture, said Lauren Stiller Rikleen in The Boston Globe. Lawyers can either launch “a principled fight” to uphold the rule of law or let the U.S. become a “place where democracy is just another banned word.”