Hogan Lovells Inherits Trump Deals Quandary in Cadwalader Merger

Hogan Lovells is set to inherit the murky status of Cadwalader’s commitment to President Donald Trump for $100 million in legal services for causes he and the firm support.

Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft is among nine firms that pledged services to avoid executive orders or federal investigations in Trump’s push to end “partisan lawfare.” Hogan Lovells has become part of the conversation about the agreements because it plans to merge with Cadwalader by mid-2026.

“Hogan Lovells is not a party to any agreement of consequence or any pledge or any commitment to do the pro bono work,” Hogan Lovells Chief Executive Officer Miguel Zaldivar said in an interview when asked about Cadwalader’s obligation. When asked if the Trump agreement will fall onto the merged firm, he said, “That is absolutely not part of my interest.”

Hogan Lovells’ approach shows that for now the firm is adopting what has been the posture of the nine Big Law firms that made the deals with Trump. The firms have said little about the agreements and show no indication they have been doing—or will do—anything to fulfill them. Trump has also been silent about the commitments for months. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s unclear what obligation—if any—the merged Hogan Lovells Cadwalader must fulfill. The law firm agreements, as announced on Trump’s Truth Social account, lack many of the details of conventional legal contracts. They contain no deadlines, and they don’t say whether an entity formed out of a merger incurs the obligations.

“This isn’t a liability in the same sense as debt, where there would absolutely be a covenant to collect funds from a successor entity,” said Bruce MacEwen, a former lawyer at Morgan Stanley and president of Adam Smith Esq. “If the Trump administration didn’t contemplate the Cadwalader entity they’re making the agreement with would go away, then tough on them.”

How Hogan Lovells finesses the Trump agreement post-merger is a particularly important question for the firm, which touts its independent, apolitical approach to client relationships. Hogan Lovells has advised Ukraine and the DC embassy of Saudi Arabia in matters before US government bodies.

The firm of more than 2,500-lawyers also performed nearly 170,000 hours of pro bono work last year, and none of it was what Zaldivar said he would call “political.”

“Hogan Lovells is a global firm—we’re independent,” he said in the interview. That “is what has enabled us to be effective advocates for some of the governments that rely on our services.”

Cadwalader’s Deals

Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader in December announced their merger, which will close pending a partner vote at each firm. The combination would create a $3.6 billion operation with more than 3,000 attorneys across the globe—big enough to rank it among the five largest law firms in the world by revenue.

Eight months before announcing the merger, on April 11, Trump announced a legal services agreement with Cadwalader. It was one of five agreements with law firms announced by Trump that day, and it brought the total number of deals with firms to nine, where it still stands.

Cadwalader had engaged in the type of behavior that has prompted Trump’s ire with law firms. Its leaders balked at allowing then partner Todd Blanche to represent Trump because of his political volatility, compelling the attorney to leave and start his own practice, Bloomberg Law reported last May.

Blanche represented Trump in a New York state court trial in 2024 that resulted in a conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Blanche was confirmed as Trump’s deputy attorney general in March of last year.

EEOC Probes

Also in March 2025, Hogan Lovells was among 20 law firms hit with an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into possible discriminatory hiring practices. Six of the firms that did Trump deals had been hit with EEOC probes.

The EEOC said Feb. 9 it ended the investigation, acknowledging that most firms failed to comply with data requests.

Cadwalader faces a steeper climb than the other elite firms in satisfying the Trump requirement for $100 million in free legal services. It handled only about $5 million worth of pro bono work in 2024, Nicholas Gravante, then co-chair of Cadwalader’s global litigation group, confirmed last year.

When questioned by congressional Democrats in April 2025 about the Trump agreement, Cadwalader co-managing partner Patrick Quinn said the deal conforms to the firm’s “long-standing principles” and does “not require any significant changes to our current practices.”

Cadwalader didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Hogan Independence

Hogan Lovells has advised Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC, South Korea, and Japan, according to a Foreign Agent Registration Act filings in 2024 and 2025. For the Saudi Royal Embassy, the firm has provided litigation support, legislative and foreign policy advice, public relations, and government advocacy, the filings show.

Zaldivar said in an interview in August 2025 that the firm represented Ukraine in negotiating a mineral rights deal with the US government. “Because we’re completely independent and we have not compromised our independence, we can try to negotiate for them the best possible deal,” he said then.

If foreign government clients see the firm doing the bidding of the Trump administration for free, it could alienate them, even if a court or regulatory agency wouldn’t consider it a conflict of interest, said Rebecca Roiphe, a legal ethics professor with New York Law School. By doing such work, “it looks like they’ve capitulated to the US government,” she said.

MacEwen said Zaldivar will likely make clients’ interests a top consideration as he decides what to do about the Cadwalader commitment post-merger.

“I’m sure that in the back of Miguel Zaldivar’s mind is the simple calculation of whether the Hogan Lovells client roster would appreciate the firm doing a big favor for the Trump administration,” MacEwen said. “It’s Zaldivar’s job to keep clients happy.”

—With reporting by Chris Opfer