Big Law’s Big Lawyer to Fight Trump Is a Conservative Superstar

He is, by most accounts, a LeBron James of lawyers—a master who’s handled more Supreme Court cases than just about anyone else in recent history.

Now Paul Clement is stepping into a delicate new role: Big Law’s big lawyer.

As President Donald Trump targets one leading law firm after another, WilmerHale has turned to Clement – a conservative who has argued against recognition of same-sex marriages and for gun rights. The firm, with a deep roster of Wall Street clients, sued Friday to challenge a Trump administration order that threatens key parts of its business and would suspend its lawyers’ security clearances.

The lawsuit, along with ones filed by Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie, marked a split in the industry’s response to the president’s directives against firms he has accused of being part of a “weaponization” of the legal system against him. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom reached a deal Friday to head off an expected executive order against it, following in the tracks of another major firm, Paul Weiss, which settled with the administration last week.

Paul Clement answers questions outside the US Supreme Court in 2022.

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Read more: Two Big Law Firms Sue Trump as Third Settles to Avoid Order

By tapping Clement, WilmerHale is bringing in a seasoned litigator whose conservative credentials are undeniable, making it hard to argue he’s a part of any sort of liberal agenda. He’s a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush. He has argued more than 100 Supreme Court cases, including some of the most prominent of the past two decades.

That includes representing the states that sought to overturn then President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2012; winning a 2014 ruling on behalf of retailer Hobby Lobby to let closely held companies claim religious exemptions from the Obamacare requirement that they cover contraceptives in their health plans; and persuading the court last year to overturn the decades-old Chevron doctrine in a blow to federal regulatory power.

“I think there’s a 100% probability that this will go to the Supreme Court,” said Ronald Allen, a law professor at Northwestern University. “In terms of hiring somebody to represent you, it was a stroke of genius. Frankly, there are only a few other people with his skillset, and he’s in that very small group who are the best.”

Clement, 58, said in a statement via WilmerHale that the firm’s lawsuit was “absolutely critical to vindicating the First Amendment, our adversarial system of justice, and the rule of law.”

Within hours of filing it, Clement appeared Friday in federal court in Washington for a hearing on the case. He spoke about the “chilling” effect the Trump order already had on WilmerHale, which he said had two meetings with government agencies canceled that day. Lawyers, he said, shouldn’t have to “look over their shoulder” to see the consequence of taking a case or deciding how to argue it.

After Clement’s arguments, US District Judge Richard Leon agreed to temporarily block part of Trump’s order against WilmerHale. Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie have secured similar orders from other federal judges.

‘Best Advocate’

Clement formed his current firm, Clement & Murphy, after twice leaving big white-shoe firms like the one he’s now defending.

In 2011, he resigned from King & Spalding after the firm withdrew as counsel for the House of Representatives in arguing for the Defense of Marriage Act, which let states refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. In 2022, he left Kirkland & Ellis after the firm announced it would no longer represent the gun industry.

In a sign of how respected Clement is at the Supreme Court, he drew praise from liberal Justice Elena Kagan when he left King & Spalding.

“Paul is the best advocate I know,” said Lisa Blatt, a Supreme Court lawyer at Williams & Connolly, which is representing Perkins Coie in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. She is a close friend of Clement’s and a self-described liberal Democrat.

“This representation is the latest in a long list in which Paul has served as the model for everything that is admirable about the legal profession,” Blatt said.

Trump’s actions against five major law firms — WilmerHale, Jenner, Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling — has left the industry struggling with how to respond. The moves have threatened lawyer security clearances and government contracts for firms and their clients.

For weeks, the most senior partners at top firms have been debating whether to express support for Perkins Coie in the form of a friend of the court brief. Boutique firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, has been trying to garner signatories for the filing, according to people familiar with the matter. That firm didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Big Law Divergence

Skadden avoided a directive from Trump with its agreement. In what the president called “essentially a settlement,” the firm committed to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal work for the administration’s priorities, he said. Paul Weiss agreed to spend $40 million in pro bono services in its deal.

Todd Baker, a senior fellow at the Richman Center for Business, Law & Public Policy at Columbia University, said the divergence in approach at big law firms to Trump’s orders is significant.

“The legal profession is splitting, but not on traditional partisan or conservative versus liberal lines,” he said.

Firms are assessing how much they’d be damaged by a Trump order targeting them, according to Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell University. He said he was “modestly hopeful” that Clement stepping into the fray could stoke more support for those that are threatened.

“He is hardly a radical,” Dorf said of Clement. “He is as much of an establishment figure as you can imagine.”

Clement has already played a role in another collision between the Trump administration and the judiciary: He was the expert tapped by a New York federal judge to provide advice on the government’s request to dismiss criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams.

The request rocked the Manhattan US attorney’s office, prompting resignations by career prosecutors who were unwilling to carry out the administration’s demands. One of the contentious issues was the suggestion that the case be dismissed without prejudice, fueling concerns that prosecutors could refile the charges should Adams not support Trump’s policies.

In advising US District Judge Dale Ho in that case, Clement recommended it be dismissed with prejudice — as in, permanently — in a rejection of the administration.

--With assistance from Emily Flitter, David Gillen, Simone Foxman and Meghan Tribe.

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