Quinn Emanuel’s Wide Embrace of Clients Fails Trump Loyalty Test

In just four months, Quinn Emanuel’s Bill Burck went from being loved in Trump world to being fired.

The rise and fall of Burck with Trump is a hard lesson for a litigation powerhouse that is used to being valued across the political and corporate spectrum for its acumen in high-profile cases. It’s also a reminder of the challenge that Big Law firms face if they want to to stay in Trump’s good graces while also opposing him.

The Trump Organization, when it hired Burck in January, touted him as “one of the nation’s finest and most respected lawyers.” But on April 24, President Donald Trump noted Burck “represents me” while also assisting Harvard University’s lawsuit against his administration. “He’s not that good, anyway,” Trump said of Burck, urging his sons in a Truth Social post to fire him. They did.

In a statement to Bloomberg Law, Trump Organization executive vice president Eric Trump said he viewed Burck’s involvement with Harvard as a conflict. “I will be moving in a different direction,” he said.

While there was no conflict of interest in Burck’s representation of both Harvard and the Trump Organization, Trump’s ire was predictable, said Stephen Gillers, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law.

The firm “was not suing Trump himself and not representing Trump himself,” Gillers noted. “The situation was inauspicious, however, because Trump could view Quinn Emanuel’s conduct as disloyal and explode at any time, as he did. Once he did, Quinn could no longer represent Trump’s company and had to get out.”

Attorney William Burck looks on as Witness Special Counsel Robert K. Hur testifies during a House Judiciary Committee Hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building on March 12, 2024 in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Burck, co-managing partner of the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, has stellar bona fides as a GOP lawyer. He has represented Trump allies in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and serves on the Fox Corp. board. He also worked behind the scenes to facilitate deals for free legal services between Trump and law firms the president reached deals with for free legal services.

“As a prominent, highly credentialed conservative lawyer, he’s not the only one who is going to be facing this,” Walter Olson, a fellow at libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute, said of Burck’s dismissal. “There’s going to be a line that the administration will cross, and their impulse will be to use their skills for what Trump sees as the wrong side.”

Burck and Quinn Emanuel declined to comment.

Pick a Side

Quinn Emanuel has embraced a traditional law firm model of maintaining strong ties with both sides of politics. The approach has allowed firms to maintain connections with high-ranking members of Washington politics no matter which party is in charge.

Burck was on a team that secured a victory in favor of Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, against the IRS in litigation over a data theft that elicited a rare public apology from the agency to Griffin. Burck’s firm is also defending Kilmar Abrego Garcia in litigation with the Trump administration over the El Salvador immigrant’s detainment in his home country.

But in sanctioning firms for associating with causes viewed as adverse to him, and compelling them to pledge hundreds of million dollars worth of free legal services, Trump is making the legal operations pick a side, Olson said. “The old model, where it was seen as an advantage to have members of administrations of both parties, is not seen as such a good thing,” he said.

Peter Zeughauser, founder of the Zeughauser Group, said it is particularly difficult for a litigation firm such as Quinn Emanuel to consistently pick the president’s political side in the cases it chooses to take on. “Litigation shops fall into a different category; they like to take cases that they think they can win,” he said. “It’s another notch in their belt.”

Law firm strategist Bruce MacEwen thinks Burck’s decision to take on Harvard as a client represents a strategic analysis by Burck and his firm about which matters the firm should take on.

“This move by Bill Burck and Quinn is in a way the inevitable next step on the chessboard between the firm and the administration,” MacEwen said. “We are absolutely positive that Quinn knew this would happen and made the choices it did with the certain knowledge that would occur.”

Easy Win?

Quinn Emanuel is representing Harvard as the university asserts the government stifled free speech in freezing $2.2 billion in federal funding.

It’s not the first time a law firm with ties to Trump’s inner circle has taken an adverse stance against the Trump administration in a high-profile case. Paul Clement, a conservative lawyer floated as possible Supreme Court nominee after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is also suing the Trump administration for WilmerHale, one of the firms targeted by a Trump executive order.

Law firms and other organizations targeted by Trump are seeing initial success in their lawsuits against the president’s punitive actions. WilmerHale and three other targeted firms have secured temporary restraining orders against the administration and judges appear inclined to rule against them in whole.

The success of firms in garnering injunctions against Trump’s law firm-directed executive orders has empowered them to take up an adversarial stance against the administration, Zeughauser said.

“They are a powerful litigation shop and they can spot an easy win when they see it,” Zeughauser said. “Litigators are assessing these executive orders as easy wins with increasing confidence.”