Big law spends top dollar as Trump takes aim at firms

A series of new agreements brokered between President Trump and major law firms suggests a new price tag for those looking to dodge executive orders targeting the legal profession.

Nine firms have now signed agreements with the administration, with Trump announcing five new deals on Friday that reached a new high price – $125 million each for four of the firms.

It’s an escalation from deals announced just a few weeks ago requiring firms to do $100 million in pro bono work for causes championed by the Trump administration.

Law firms have been hashing deals with the White House in the wake of a series of executive orders targeting specific law firms, revoking any security clearances held by their lawyers, reviewing any contracts they hold with the government, and barring them from entering federal buildings.

“You can look at it as extortion and a shakedown, or you could look at it as a bribe from the other perspective – or it may be both,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. 

“But it's absolutely outrageous that the president threatens and intimidates lawyers by banning them from federal government buildings and contracts and security clearance, and then the firms basically have to pay their way out of this kind of banning and shunning.”

The executive orders are not the only thorn in the side of firms.

Many were also contacted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) asking firms questions about their hiring practices and implying firms’ efforts to diversify their workforce could violate employment laws.

The signatories to the $125 million deals – Kirkland and Ellis, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Latham & Watkins – had all received EEOC letters.

Kirkland and Ellis made clear that was a factor in their decision to reach a deal with the administration.

“In exchange, this resolves the EEOC’s investigation, including its broad request for information about our people and our clients, which we no longer will be required to provide, and we will not be the target of an executive order,” the firm’s committee wrote in explaining the deal to its staff.

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, which was not contacted by the EEOC, also signed a deal with the Trump administration Friday for $100 million in pro bono work. That firm previously employed Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney, but forced him to leave when he took on Trump as a client. Blanche now serves as deputy attorney general.

One attorney at a major law firm said he expects the deals to continue while their price tag may continue to hike.

“I think it doesn't end, at least not anytime soon, not when the president perceives with basis that he is able to chill and intimidate and alter the decision making of major law firms, and cause many lawyers and many law firms to think once, twice, three times or more,” the attorney said.

“There is benefit to him in continuing to do it. He may get slapped down here and there by a court, but the message has already been received and continues to be received: be careful. Let us be careful about what we do as a firm. Let us be careful about what our partners do. Let us be careful about what our name is associated with.”

Other firms that signed deals had similarly run afoul of the Trump administration. Paul, Weiss had employed Mark Pomerantz, who left the firm to work on the hush money investigation into Trump. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which also signed a deal, is the firm of former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Milbank employs Neal Katyal, a Trump critic and former acting solicitor general under Obama.

The expanding number of deals — and their rising prices — has also increased scrutiny of them. 

Raskin and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote letters to the White House as well as several firms that have signed such deals asking for more details on the arrangements, including how meetings were arranged and the specifics of the deal.

In explaining why they’ve taken such arrangements many firms have defended their pro bono work, arguing they would be taking on causes they already back — like defending veterans and fighting antisemitism. 

Paul, Weiss chairman Brad Karp described the firm as agreeing to do pro bono work “in areas of shared interest” on topics “in which we are already doing significant work.”

But Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said the deals put the firms in a position where they are unable to challenge the Trump administration.

“I think the biggest problem is that once you go down this road of caving into a bully and trying to negotiate a deal, you're in bed with the devil,” he told The Hill.

“My guess is that the vast majority of that stuff falls within what their broader objectives and goals would be, and that the reason why they felt comfortable agreeing to this is that the actual demands were not out of bounds from what they would normally do. But that, in part, is the point,” he added.

“Because Donald Trump wants to make them cave to him, or at least appear to cave to him, to cower to him, to bend the knee to him so that he can assert his power over them. And the fact that they would do it anyway is, I think,  further reason why they should not have agreed to a deal with the devil.”

At least one conservative group has already sought to put the firm's pro bono offerings to the test. 

The Oversight Project, formerly linked with the Heritage Foundation, wrote to firms last month asking for $10 million in pro bono legal work.

“We request that your firm join us in helping return the legal industry to normalcy where firms once again represent clients of all ideological backgrounds,” the group’s leader Mike Howell wrote in a letter obtained by Bloomberg News, stating they planned to launch “challenges to regulatory and state overreach and defense against partisan lawfare.”

“In return, we are prepared to publicly acknowledge your firm’s contribution to restoring balance in the legal landscape and rejecting lawfare.”

While nine firms have brokered deals, four law firms have instead launched suits. Three have earned initial victories in court, while the latest from the firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its suit against Fox News was only launched this weekend.  

Perkins Coie, the firm used by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, was first to sue, with a judge agreeing to block the parts of Trump's order mandating a review of their contracts and blocking its attorneys from government buildings.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell was scathing in her assessment of the Trump move, arguing that the order “appears to be an instance of President Trump using taxpayer dollars [and] government resources to pursue what is a wholly personal vendetta.”

More than 500 law firms and 300 retired judges sought to file an amicus brief backing the firm, as did numerous civil rights groups and other think tanks.

“These executive orders by President Trump – that are very clearly in retaliation for legal work and legal advocacy performed by these firms –  is a dagger at the heart of that system. It is a dagger at the heart of due process and of our national tradition of resolving disputes peacefully through a legal process,” Clark Neily, senior vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute, told reporters last week.

“This is a shot across the bow of the entire legal profession, an attempt to discourage lawyers from providing the kind of zealous legal advocacy that is necessary to resolve disputes in civil society peacefully through litigation.”