Trump-Targeted Firms’ Allies Shield Lawyer Names in Court (1)

A group of lawyers wading back into the fight over President Donald Trump’s executive orders against law firms remained anonymous in their latest effort.

Law Firm Partners United on Friday filed an amicus brief backing the firms, but only one attorney is named in the brief—Eric Olson, the lawyer representing the partners in the group. More than 100 lawyers identified themselves in the group’s brief last year when a fight over one of the orders played out in a district court.

The shift to anonymity, and the small number of Big Law firms that backed a separate brief Friday, come despite successful challenges to Trump’s crackdown on the industry. The executive orders were quickly shot down, while the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dropped probes of 20 large firms’ diversity programs. Yet the risks of challenging the administration remains a salient factor for the profession.

“The prospect of being the next target of an unconstitutional order looms large over any law firm or lawyer that might wish to represent causes or clients disapproved of by the administration,” Olson wrote in the LFPU brief. LFPU said its members include more than 880 partners at the 200 biggest firms in the country.

Four federal judges last year blocked Trump’s orders against Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey. The courts described the orders as unconstitutional retaliation against firms over their ties to lawyers the president sees as enemies and cases he opposes. DOJ filed an appeal and the four cases were consolidated in the US District Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

More than 800 law firms and legal offices signed onto the separate Friday brief. That’s about 60% more than those who joined last year, but only a handful are among the 100 largest US law firms.

Seyfarth Shaw, Covington & Burling, Arnold & Porter, Crowell & Moring, and Davis Wright Tremaine are among the large firms that signed on. Fenwick & West, another large firm, signed last year’s brief but was not on the list this time around.

It’s not clear where the partners backing the LFPU brief are currently working. Those who put their names on the group’s filing last year came from Goodwin Procter, Littler Mendelson, Winston & Strawn, and Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, among other firms. Only a few identify as members of the group on LinkedIn.

Trump’s orders alleged the firms posed national security risks and engaged in discriminatory hiring practices. The president called for a review of the firms’ security clearances, threatened federal contracts held by clients, and demanded investigations into their hiring practices. The orders also sought to block lawyers from entering government buildings.

Paul Weiss, one of the first firms hit with an order, reached a deal with the White House to have it revoked in exchange for providing $40 million in free legal services on shared causes. Eight other firms reached similar deals, agreeing to a combined $940 million in legal work.

LFPU told the court that some lawyers and firms are now shying away from work in order to stay out of the cross-hairs.

“Throughout the legal industry, clients who previously had no difficulty finding representation are being turned away by those who worry that taking the cases might risk presidential disapproval,” the group said. “And many clients now worry that they will be targeted for retribution if they hire law firms who are or might become targets of similar executive orders.”

An anonymous group of more than 800 current and former in-house lawyers filed its own brief on Friday, voicing concerns of the Trump orders from a corporate counsel’s vantage point. The brief argued that corporate counsel see risk in working with any law firm regardless of whether they’ve been subjected to a Trump order.

That group filed its argument in court shortly before more than 70 general counsel, most of whom no longer work at their companies, put their names to a brief they filed separately.

The executive orders, if enacted, would make it “infeasible for many companies to retain the targeted firms,” argued the anonymous GC group, named General Counsels United. Companies working with firms who settled would face “a host of potential conflict issues in any matter that involves the federal government,” they said.

The case is: Perkins Coie v. DOJ, D.D.C., 25-05241, 4/3/26