You’ll be forgiven if your heart isn’t exactly breaking over the fate of a handful of elite law firms recently targeted by Donald Trump. So a few mega-rich corporations who help make mega-mega-rich corporations even richer stand to get a little less rich? We’ve got bigger problems.

But don’t skim past this one. You’ve heard the Shakespeare quote: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That line is sometimes misinterpreted as an expression of frustration directed at lawyers, who are always mucking things up and impeding free enterprise and a good time. But Shakespeare’s point, in context, is that lawyers stand in the way of lawlessness, so anyone hoping to subvert the established order might want to start by chucking all us pesky J.D.s in the river.  

Trump has now targeted a string of elite law firms for reasons that are equal parts Machiavelli, Mean Girls, and Dick (the character who speaks the aforementioned line in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2). The President has issued a series of formal proclamations that warn vaguely but darkly of the “significant risks” posed by these “rogue law firms” who engage in “harmful activity” and “egregious conduct.” The Orwellian preludes quickly give way to burn-book flaming of the condemned law firms. Trump offers zero pretext; this is entirely about retribution, personal and political. 

Witness the sins of the Commander-in-Chief’s disfavored firms. Covington & Burling (where I worked twenty-plus years ago) made the list primarily because, horror of horrors, they are providing free legal services to Jack Smith. The President attacked Jenner and Block largely because they formerly employed Andrew Weissmann, who once prosecuted the bumbling Trump-adjacent ostrich-skin aficionado Paul Manafort, and WilmerHale, which has hired lawyers who once worked on Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. Perkins Coie got their comeuppance because they represented Hillary Clinton and have worked with George Soros. (Now, don’t you feel safe and protected from all the big, scary “significant risks” that were afoot?)

Trump instinctively understands how to hit his chosen enemies where it hurts most: the bottom line. All law firms aspire to high-minded principles (and sometimes achieve them) but they are, at core, relentless profit-seeking vessels. Trump – no stranger to cold-blooded capitalism – has expertly crafted his proclamations to bring the named firms to their knees. 

First, the proclamations strip all firm lawyers of security clearances and bar them from access to government buildings – making it effectively impossible to represent clients in any federal criminal or regulatory matter. And, crucially, the proclamations threaten that any company doing business with the targeted law firms will lose its government contracts.

Consider these conditions from the perspective of a potential blue-chip client – say, a private aeronautics company that relies on federal government contracts for the bulk of its revenue. If that company needed representation on any criminal or regulatory case, it would immediately drop the targeted firms, given that the lawyers can’t even step foot inside DOJ or Securities and Exchange Commission or Department of Defense buildings. And why would our hypothetical aeronautics company hire a blacklisted firm, at the risk of losing its federal government contracts? The safe move for a rational, self-interested client is to tiptoe down the street to any of the dozens of elite law firms that have not (yet) incurred the President’s wrath.

Trump’s retributive effort has left the targeted law firms with two stark options. 

First: Surrender. Two of the firms selected by Trump, Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps, did the math and buckled. The (perhaps formerly) mega-prestigious New York-based legal practices cut deals with the president – “essentially a settlement” in his words, “essentially a shakedown” in mine. These arrangements are voluntary for the law firms in the same sense that the corner butcher voluntarily peels off five hundreds every Friday for the local capo’s collector. 

Paul Weiss agreed, first, to do $40 million worth of pro bono (free) legal work for various causes; Skadden Arps coughed up $100 million. Well, that’s not so bad, right? We generally celebrate lawyers for donating their time to pro bono causes, after all. But the catch is that firms agreed to do that work for causes supported by the President. Want to represent a pro-choice abortion advocacy group? A climate change non-profit? A death row inmate challenging his conviction? Good luck getting approval from those government overseers. The problem here isn’t with the causes themselves; it’s that these private law firms will allow the President and his administration to dictate what causes and clients they can and cannot represent. 

These firms are victims in a sense, but they’re not helpless patsies. Paul Weiss in 2024 made over $2.6 billion in total revenues and – brace yourself – $7.5 million in profits per equity partner. Skadden Arps generated $3.2 billion in revenues, and $5.4 million in profits per equity partner. These are collectives of extraordinarily savvy lawyers who make their living navigating the corridors of power. And when faced with the President’s wrath – and the loss of big-money clients – they chose to negotiate revenue-saving deals, at the expense of their independence and professional dignity. 

The other option for the targeted firms is to do the same thing they do for a living, the same thing they thought they’d be doing when they went to law school, years ago: Go to court and take a stand. 

Three firms have now challenged Trump’s proclamations; all have achieved some measure of success. In all three cases, federal judges (including two George W. Bush appointees) have placed temporary holds on key aspects of Trump’s targeting actions. One of the Bush-appointed judges called Trump’s scheme “disturbing” and “troubling.”     

Trump has picked countless legal fights during his first two months back in office, many aimed at expansion of his own power. He might ultimately prevail on some of those, especially in the conservative-leaning, pro-Executive Supreme Court. But he’s going to get his clock cleaned on his lawyer-targeting initiative. 

For starters, it’s flagrantly unconstitutional. This is about more than a few posh law firms enduring a temporary reduction in revenue. It’s about free speech and association. It’s about due process and access to government. It’s about the freedom of individuals and (yes) corporations to engage counsel of their choosing. 

The courts will have none of it. Keep in mind that every judge is a lawyer – many came through the same type of big-law mega-firms now in the crosshairs – and they’ll understand the threat posed by Trump’s actions. This isn’t about left-against-right or liberals-against-conservatives. This is about the integrity and functioning of the legal profession, writ large. 

Ultimately from Trump’s perspective, the targeting of law firms is about eliminating an especially potent source of resistance (lower-case “r”) to implementation of his agenda. It’s clear now that Congress will do nothing to check the President’s actions. Nor will there be any meaningful adverse investigation by our fully-neutered DOJ – led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has already shown herself to be completely in the bag for Trump – or from anywhere else in the Executive Branch. The only real pushback will come from the courts and the lawyers. And, as Trump recognizes, if he can incapacitate the lawyers, then he can wipe out one of the few remaining sources of meaningful opposition to his romp through American public (and private) life. 

Now those law firms in the President’s crosshairs must decide: Do they cave in to save their own profits-per-partner, or do they stand up and fight?