After Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms, four of the firms chose to fight back against the president’s authoritarian-style assault. Given that the quartet filed separate lawsuits against the White House, and they’re undefeated in court so far, it appears they made the smart decision.
As The New York Times recently noted after one of the four firms’ court victories, “The ruling seemed to validate the strategy, embraced by a minority of firms, of fighting the administration instead of caving to a pressure campaign and making deals with Mr. Trump to avoid persecution.”
For the rest of the targeted firms, the consequences of their misjudgment have gone from bad to worse. Reuters reported:
A group of seven partners is leaving Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump in April to avert an executive order targeting its business, to join Cooley, which is representing one of the law firms fighting Trump’s orders. … There was widespread dissatisfaction in Willkie’s San Francisco office over the firm’s agreement with the administration, according to a source familiar with the matter who said as many as 15 associates have expressed interest in leaving.
Other firms that chose a Trump appeasement strategy are facing similar problems: Damian Williams, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, recently announced that he’s leaving Paul Weiss (one of the firms that struck a deal with the White House) and joining Jenner & Block (one of the firms that fought back).
Indeed, it’s been difficult to keep up with the number of partners who’ve abandoned Paul Weiss in recent weeks as a result of its Trump agreement.
In case that weren’t enough, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that at least 11 big companies “are moving work away from law firms that settled with the administration or are giving — or intend to give — more business to firms that have been targeted but refused to strike deals.”
The article added, “In interviews, general counsels expressed concern about whether they could trust law firms that struck deals to fight for them in court and in negotiating big deals if they weren’t willing to stand up for themselves against Trump.”
Let’s also not forget that some of these same firms are also starting to realize that their deals with the president are worse than they first realized.
The entire strategy has backfired spectacularly. From the firms’ perspective, appeasement was supposed to guarantee relative tranquility and client satisfaction. Instead, these firms are losing clients, partners, associates and credibility within the industry.
If that weren’t quite enough, The New York Times reported that the firms that have already prevailed against the White House have noticed that Trump and his lawyers haven’t even appealed their defeats in court.
W. Bradley Wendel, a law professor at Cornell who is an authority on legal ethics, told the Times, in reference to White House officials, “They knew that these were losing positions from the beginning and were not actually hoping to win in court, but rather to intimidate firms into settling, as many firms did. Now that they have racked up the four losses in district courts, it is not surprising that they are not appealing, because I don’t think they ever thought these were serious positions.” The firms that tried to placate and pacify the president must be kicking themselves right about now. All they had to do was defend themselves, their profession, the law and the integrity of the system itself, and they could’ve avoided all kinds of problems. But it’s also worth remembering that it might not be too late for the firms to course-correct. I’m reminded anew of a recent NBC News report about a progressive group that launched a media campaign targeting the firms that reached deals with the president. ‘Big law, stop bending the knee,’ reads a poster from the ‘Big Law Cowards’ campaign by the liberal nonprofit group Demand Justice. The group says the ads will be wheatpasted strategically around Washington on Thursday near the locations of the firms that have reached deals with the administration. The group will also have a mobile billboard circulating with ads criticizing the firms, along with a broader digital campaign. The underlying point of these efforts isn’t to chastise the firms for making the wrong decision; it’s to remind those firms that it’s not too late to reverse course and join the ranks of the firms resisting Trump’s gambit. Will any of the firms abandon their existing deals? If one firm does it, will others follow? Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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