Law Firms Thread Needle on Trump Pledges With Minimal Change

Nine big law firms that promised President Donald Trump $940 million in free legal services are changing little to meet their commitments, a strategy enabled by the deals’ vagueness and judges striking down orders punishing three competitors.

The agreements lack deadlines, definitions or processes, giving firms wide latitude in interpreting them. Firm leaders realize the president has less leverage to punish them for how they follow the deals after three judges struck down Trump orders. The president, after demonstrating that he can intimidate law firms, has shown little interest in enforcing the agreements—he’s barely mentioned them in the last 60 days.

“Neither party has an incentive to push it—it’s in that where the success lies,” said Rebecca Roiphe, an ethics professor at New York Law School. The deals were “more of a PR move, with a sword hanging over the heads of law firms to make them think about whether what they do pleases or displeases the administration.”

The firms’ approach signals they have settled on a strategy to limit the reputational damage suffered since they made the deals. By avoiding a fight with the president, they can aim to stay in his good graces. By changing little about their operations, they can argue Trump hasn’t forced them to yield to his whims.

Most firms that made the deals didn’t return multiple requests for comment about how they will make good on their pledges. Two of the law firms interviewed for this story declined to speak on the record about how they are formulating their path to meeting the pledge.

Only one law firm leader, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft’s Nicholas Gravante, proposed a route to make good on the commitment—by partnering with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office to fight criminal appeals.

The nine firms—Paul Weiss, Kirkland, Skadden, Latham, Milbank, Cadwalader, A&O Sherman, Simpson Thacher, and Willkie—have taken blows since pledging the legal services to Trump in late March and early April. Associates have quit, with some publicly rebuking their firms; lawyers and legal experts have criticized the operations for a lack of fortitude; and partners have headed for the exit.

The ambiguities in the agreements give the firms an opening to meet the deals in ways to avoid more public ridicule. For instance, they can take work they already do and insist that it checks a box for Trump.

“It’s wise to be as vague as possible, which explains the firms’ lack of any effort to reduce whatever the arrangement is to writing,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School. “If you start negotiating with Trump, then you wind up identifying what he may conclude are gaps in what you’ve got, and then he demands more.”

The firms committed legal work to Trump in broad categories, such as fairness in the justice system, combating antisemitism, and helping veterans and law enforcement. Such vague categories give firms wide latitude on how to meet the agreement, said Joe Altonji, a law firm consultant and founder of LawVision.

“Lawyers have a wide range of perspectives on what `fairness in the justice system’ means,” he said.

No Change

The firms made deals to avoid Trump executive orders that punished some law operations for their ties to lawyers who crossed him. Three firms hit with such orders—Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale—later obtained permanent injunctions against the missives. A fourth firm hit with an order, Susman Godfrey, has obtained a temporary injunction against it.

The court rulings took the bite out of Trump’s threats to end lawyer security clearances, restrict access to federal buildings, and scuttle government contracts. “The odds are quite high” that the nine firms would win in a court spat with the president, Roiphe said.

Hence they can take comfort in a status quo approach. Three of the firms—A&O Shearman, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison—said in written responses to inquiring congressional Democrats from mid to late April that they have nothing to change in their pro bono efforts to comply with their Trump agreements.

“Much of our lawyers’ pro bono work centers on fairness in the justice system, and we have long represented veterans and victims of religious discrimination,” William White and William Roll, co-US general counsel of A&O Shearman, wrote.

Willkie accepted 12 combat-related special compensation cases and one medical retirement administrative appeal in 2022 for military veterans, according to a report by National Veterans Legal Services Program.

Cadwalader has ample time to meet its commitment so “there are absolutely no plans to change the way that we do business or to scale up anything,” Gravante said in an interview. The firm’s veterans life planning clinic performs work that likely contributes to the agreement, he said.

‘Plausible Deniability’

The lack of binding elements found in normal contracts provides firms with “plausible deniability” when questioned about the ethics of an agreement that rewards pledged legal services with favorable treatment from a volatile president, said J. Andrew Moss, a Reed Smith partner and pro bono advocate for immigrants navigating the asylum process.

“When we talk about the executive branch telling a private law firm it has to represent clients it wouldn’t otherwise take on, I think you get into an ethical issue there,” he said.

The president also benefits from the ambiguity of his agreements with law firms, Gillers said. “Trump realized in the midst of these negotiations that he might want to use the work of these law firms after he’s no longer president in situations that could not even remotely be called pro bono,” he said.

Regardless of how the agreements are fulfilled, Trump has already won a victory by intimidating firms, Roiphe said. Many now wonder, “if you take on a new client, is this going to get the attention of the administration,” she said.