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When Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms, the businesses faced a difficult decision: appease the president or fight back against the Republican’s authoritarian-style assault.
To date, four firms — Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, Susman Godfrey and WilmerHale — chose the latter course, and at least so far, they’re undefeated in court. As The New York Times noted after WilmerHale’s latest victory, “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.”
Those in the appeasement camp have had far less to celebrate. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Support for the law firms that didn’t make deals has been growing inside the offices of corporate executives. 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, according to general counsels at those companies and other people familiar with those decisions. ... 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.
The Journal’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the firms that cooperated with the White House’s offensive are confronting the awkward realization that their strategy backfired: “The agreements were supposed to buy peace and allow the firms to move on, but in the weeks since they have caused rifts between partners, alienated some younger associates and created problems with some longtime clients.”
The same article noted that one of the big firms lost an associate who wrote in his departure email that he refused to “sleepwalk toward authoritarianism.” This coincided with a recent New York Times report on four of the top partners at Paul Weiss — one of the legal giants that gave in to the White House — announcing that they are leaving to create their own law firm.
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.
I’m not privy to the internal deliberations at any of the firms that chose appeasement, but common sense suggests that many, if not all, of the firms that linked arms with Team Trump have second-guessed that decision.
With this in mind, NBC News reported about a month ago that a progressive group has launched a media campaign targeting the same 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.
In case this isn’t obvious, 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.