More than 500 law firms — including some of the country’s most prominent — signed onto a legal brief Friday to oppose Donald Trump’s executive orders attacking law firms that hired his political enemies.
Absent from the list, however, were America’s 27 highest-grossing law firms.
From Kirkland & Ellis, which reported $8.8 billion in revenue last year and has about 3,800 lawyers, to Paul Hastings, with more than $2 billion in revenue, corporate America’s legal team was largely silent.
The 27 firms that didn’t sign collectively brought in over $74 billion in revenue last year.
“The largest law firms are extraordinarily powerful, and in this instance, that power actually cripples them. I’m disappointed that they didn’t join,” said Nathan Eimer, one of the lawyers who wrote the brief.
The brief was filed in support of Perkins Coie, a law firm whose attorneys Trump effectively deemed a national security threat in an executive order that barred them from federal buildings, stripped them of security clearances, and required government contractors to disclose whether they used the firm.
Several former partners at Perkins Coie represented some of Trump’s political adversaries, but most of the firm’s political lawyers have left.
Some big firms did sign on to the brief, as did some top class-action lawyers and trial lawyers who often represent plaintiffs suing big corporations.
The US arm of Freshfields, a UK-founded corporate law firm that last year was reported to do about 20% of its business in the United States, signed the brief. Arnold & Porter, a big DC-based firm that represented federal workers accused of being communists during the “Red Scare” of the 1950s, also included its name. Arnold & Porter was one of eight firms among the country’s 100 highest-earning that signed, according to Law.com.
Other firms targeted by Trump’s orders rallied behind Perkins. Covington & Burling, which gave legal advice to a prosecutor who went after Trump, as well as WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, which have sued the Trump administration over executive orders that targeted them, all put their names on the brief.
But the lack of America’s largest firms was frustrating, said Eimer, who told Business Insider he didn’t know whose names would be included until shortly before the legal papers were filed because the process was treated with extreme confidentiality.
“I understand, from the management side, why they feel that jeopardizing their business is their overriding concern. But in my view, at the end of the day, lawyers have an obligation to the courts,” he said, “and the constitution that overrides our business interest.”
Law firms, including Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, Milbank, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, have cut deals with the Trump administration to collectively devote hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lawyers’ time to causes that dovetail with the president’s interests — like veterans’ rights and fighting antisemitism.
Bloomberg reported the conservative group The Oversight Project wrote a letter to law firms asking them to donate up to $10 million of legal advice to it and other “center-right” groups to help satisfy their commitments.
The first firm to cut a deal with the Trump administration was Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, whose chairman, Brad Karp, and senior lawyers are known for being political progressives. Karp defended the agreement with the Trump administration in an email sent to the firm late last month, saying that competing law firms immediately started trying to poach Paul Weiss clients and attorneys.
“The resolution we reached with the Administration will have no effect on our work and our shared culture and values,” Karp wrote.
Paul Weiss’s name is not on the brief.
