DOJ Launches ‘Immediate Review’ of Law Firms After Trump Memo

The Justice Department is going after lawyers for “frivolous” litigation against the government with a rarely used procedural tool aimed at punishing extreme behavior by attorneys.

DOJ “began an immediate review of law firms who have participated in inappropriate activity and weaponized lawfare,” after President Donald Trump directed the move in a March 21 memo, a department spokesperson said Monday.

Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue sanctions under a federal civil procedure rule—Rule 11—designed to deter lawyers and their clients from abusing the court process. Although judges are reluctant to hand down sanctions under the rule, it provides another line of attack for the Trump administration in its broadside against lawyers and firms that the president perceives as his enemies.

“It’s mostly messaging,” said Jonathan Shaub, a University of Kentucky law professor who worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Biden administration. “The standard for rule 11 sanctions is pretty high.”

The president has already targeted three large law firms, threatening to revoke lawyers’ security clearances and tear up government contracts for clients of two of the firms. He issued the DOJ directive one day after rescinding an order against Paul Weiss because the firm agreed to commit $40 million in pro bono legal services to Trump-aligned initiatives and have an independent auditor review the firm’s diversity programs.

The president escalated his attack on the legal industry in the DOJ directive to scrutinize lawyers who have pursued “frivolous, unreasonable or vexatious” claims against the government. Trump also honed in on free legal work that large firms and legal aid groups have provided in asylum litigation, claiming it “undermines the integrity of our immigration laws.”

The order also directs Bondi to look back eight years for misconduct that could be punished by revoking security clearances and federal contracts for lawyers and their firms.

100-plus Lawsuits

The Trump administration faces more than 100 lawsuits over its rapid overhaul of government operations. Major law firms are involved in several of those cases, lending lawyers and resources to court battles that can be expensive to fight.

“The real question is, how effective is that investigation going to be and how much is it going to veer into what exactly it seems like, which is a threat against anybody who has dared to take a position opposed to the government,” Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School, said of the DOJ review.

The White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the order that it wants to hold accountable lawyers who engage in “illegal or unethical conduct, especially when their misconduct threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity.”

The order specifically called out Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias over his links to the so-called Steele dossier, which presented unverified allegations of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Elias, the leader of the Washington law firm Elias Law Group, vowed to continue to fight Trump in court. “He wants lawyers and law firms to capitulate and cower until there is no one left to oppose his administration,” he said in a statement.

Trump’s deal with Paul Weiss gave the White House a “road map for this broader attack,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles, calling it a “systematic attempt to disable the adversary system.

“This is about preventing the most-resourced law firms from actually representing the clients who want to retain them in cases that are adverse to the Trump administration,” Cummings said.

‘Judge and Executioner’

Trump’s latest memo also empowers Bondi to “recommend additional consequences” for lawyers pursuing cases deemed frivolous, including reassessing security clearances and terminating federal contracts.

“It actually puts the attorney general in the position of being the judge and then puts the president in the position of being the executioner,” Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said.

Rule 11 bans lawyers in federal courts from making representations for “any improper purpose,” including harassment or causing unnecessary delays. It requires that legal arguments be “non-frivolous” and rooted in law and evidence.

Opposing lawyers can file motions seeking sanctions under the rule, but judges also have the power to initiate sanctions proceedings.

A federal judge in Detroit invoked the rule against Trump ally Sidney Powell and other attorneys in 2021 for their pursuit of a frivolous lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. They were ordered to pay over $150,000 in legal fees to Michigan and Detroit, whose attorneys had to defend against the claims.

A Washington district court judge in 2021 cited the rule to admonish Paul Weiss and one of its former partners, Alex Oh, in their work defending Exxon Mobil Corp. in a human rights lawsuit. The court ordered Exxon to pay nearly $300,000 in legal fees for its opponents after Oh accused her opposing counsel of acting “unhinged” and “combative” without evidence to back it up. Oh resigned from a job at the Securities and Exchange Commission, just days after starting the role, amid the court’s sanctions inquiry.

There’s no clear definition of “frivolous” litigation under the rule, which also doesn’t state the factors that judges should consider in weighing sanctions. Roiphe said she opposed calls for Rule 11 sanctions against more attorneys involved in 2020 election court fights.

“It’s dangerous to do in a politically charged context because the line between failed litigation and frivolous litigation is not written in stone, and so it really should be something that’s incredibly clear,” Roiphe said. “In this context it’s better to let it play out and not use these sorts of sanctions as a proxy because when you do that, you chill lawyers from taking controversial positions.”