What happened to Big Law in 2025
By Bryson Malcolm

Why I keep coming back to this

I work with people who are deciding where to spend the next several years of their lives. A lot of them are students. Some are associates who are already wondering whether the firm they joined is the place they thought it was. So when I look at what happened to Big Law in 2025, I keep coming back to what those people were told when they were being recruited.

These firms talked about public service. They talked about inclusion and the freedom to take on difficult cases. I was a summer associate at Skadden, so this is a profession I've been part of too. People take those commitments seriously when they're choosing a firm, moving to a new city, and turning down other offers.

Then the Trump administration started targeting law firms. Within weeks, 9 firms had agreed to provide at least $940 million in legal services. Other firms went to court. Associates quit. Some of the programs firms had spent years promoting were canceled, renamed, or taken off their websites.

I want to go through how that happened, because it was very easy to lose track of the sequence. By the time you understood what had happened at 1 firm, there was another announcement. And the sequence changes how you understand the decisions. A firm that settled after an executive order was issued was in a different position from a firm that agreed before there was an order against it.

The government also didn't need to win a case against these firms to hurt them. It could make their clients nervous about keeping them. If you can make it expensive enough for a lawyer to represent someone, you can make that person's rights much harder to exercise. That's what makes this about more than the reputations of a few very wealthy law firms.

How the pressure reached clients

The first action came on February 25, 2025. Trump directed the suspension of security clearances for Covington lawyers who had helped former special counsel Jack Smith. The memorandum specifically named Peter Koski, who represented Smith, and called for a review of the government's work with the firm.

So a lawyer's representation of someone the president opposed was now creating a problem for the lawyer's entire firm. On March 6, the order against Perkins Coie took that much further. It targeted security clearances, federal contracts, access to government buildings, and contact with federal officials. It also put pressure on government contractors over their relationships with Perkins.

Put yourself in the client's position for a second. You like your lawyers. You trust their advice. But you also need an agency to approve something, or your company depends on a federal contract. Now you have to consider whether keeping those lawyers is going to create another problem for your business.

That's a very effective way to put pressure on a firm before a court has decided anything. Clients can leave while the lawyers are still preparing their complaint. Even a firm that's right about the Constitution has payroll, leases, and partners who can take their practices elsewhere.

Perkins sued on March 11. Judge Beryl Howell temporarily blocked parts of the order the next day. So by the time Paul, Weiss made its deal, Perkins had already gone to court and obtained emergency relief. Nobody could promise how all the litigation would end, but there was already a firm showing what fighting looked like.

The Paul, Weiss order followed on March 14. It attacked the firm's connection to former partner Mark Pomerantz, who had worked on an investigation of Trump. The administration was using its own accusations to justify sanctions; those accusations hadn't been proved at a trial.

On March 22, another presidential memorandum directed scrutiny of lawyers bringing litigation against the government. At that point, lawyers well beyond the named firms had reason to wonder whether their work could make them the next target.

The EEOC letters

In the middle of this, on March 17, acting EEOC chair Andrea Lucas sent letters to 20 firms about their diversity-related employment practices. She wanted responses by April 15. The requests reached into information about applicants and people who had participated in the firms' programs.

Lucas sent the letters to A&O Shearman, Cooley, Debevoise & Plimpton, Freshfields, Goodwin, Hogan Lovells, Kirkland, Latham, McDermott, Milbank, Morgan Lewis, Morrison & Foerster, Perkins Coie, Reed Smith, Ropes & Gray, Sidley, Simpson Thacher, Skadden, White & Case, and WilmerHale.

You'll notice that Paul, Weiss, Willkie, and Cadwalader aren't on that list. All 3 later made White House agreements. So the explanation that firms settled to get out from under the EEOC letters can't account for all 9 deals.

There were objections to the letters almost immediately. On March 18, 7 former senior EEOC officials wrote that Title VII didn't require firms to respond to these particular requests. Employment lawyers at FordHarrison questioned the agency's authority too. On March 25, 8 civil-rights organizations urged Lucas to withdraw the letters.

The issue was whether these requests compelled an answer. An actual discrimination charge, an enforceable subpoena, or an employer's ordinary duty to keep records involves different obligations. Here, the agency had sent unusually broad letters, and lawyers were openly questioning their legal basis.

In February 2026, the stipulation ending a student lawsuit recorded the EEOC's own position: responses had been voluntary, most firms hadn't supplied the requested information, and the response period had closed. The agency also said it hadn't received personally identifiable information about employees or applicants. The case was dismissed with prejudice, without a ruling on the merits.

I'll come back to the privacy issue when we get to Goodwin, because taking names out of a spreadsheet doesn't necessarily prevent someone from identifying the people in it.

For a student at the time, the concern was pretty immediate. You'd applied to a fellowship the firm encouraged you to apply for. Now the government wanted information about that program. The firm would decide how to respond, even though you were the person whose information might be handed over.

Paul, Weiss makes the first deal

Paul, Weiss reached its agreement on March 20. It committed $40 million in pro bono work during Trump's term for causes of mutual interest. The public terms also covered employment practices and an audit. Trump formally revoked the firm's executive order the following day.

I think part of why people reacted so strongly was the firm's own history. Paul, Weiss had spent years talking about the barriers it helped break for Jewish lawyers, Black lawyers, and women. Its lawyers worked with Thurgood Marshall on Brown v. Board of Education. They represented Edith Windsor in the Supreme Court challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.

In a 2022 interview, Loretta Lynch and Jessica Carey connected the firm's inclusion and pro bono commitments to its culture and its ability to recruit and keep people. Those were reasons the firm gave people to choose Paul, Weiss. It was reasonable for its lawyers to expect those commitments to mean something when the government put them under pressure.

Brad Karp's explanation was that the firm might not survive a prolonged fight. In his message to the firm, he described client losses and competitors trying to take advantage of its vulnerability. Reuters reported his assurance that Trump wouldn't dictate the firm's legal work.

I understand the business concern. Losing clients can become a problem very quickly when partners are also free to leave. But Karp was explaining a decision he'd made, and we don't have the full client list or financial analysis behind his conclusion. I'd want to know what alternatives the partnership considered before deciding an agreement was necessary.

Ruth Marcus's reporting in The New Yorker described Robert Kraft helping connect Karp to Trump. Her account traced the discussions through a White House meeting and the completion of terms by email. Personal access gave Karp a way to negotiate relief that other lawyers watching this unfold didn't necessarily have.

There were disagreements about the deal from the start. The firm disputed the White House's characterization of its position on Pomerantz. Bloomberg reported that Paul, Weiss removed diversity statistics and other website content, while fellowships, pipeline programs, and its inclusion chief remained. The public language changed without every internal program disappearing.

Later disclosures added another issue to Karp's account. In early 2026, records released by the Justice Department under the Trump administration showed more extensive contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein than had previously been reported. Reuters described dinners and Karp asking for help finding his son a film job. Bloomberg Law reported that Karp had reviewed and praised a 2019 draft filing defending Epstein's 2008 nonprosecution agreement.

Paul, Weiss said the interactions arose through Karp's representation of Leon Black and that Karp regretted them. It also said neither Karp nor the firm had represented Epstein. That's a denial of representation; the correspondence documents contact and supportive comments about legal work.

There's been speculation that concern about those records influenced Karp's willingness to settle quickly. Legal journalist David Lat acknowledged that rumor in February 2026 but said he knew of no evidence supporting it. We don't have evidence that Trump threatened Karp with the files or that they affected his decision. I wouldn't present that explanation as something we know happened.

What the March agreement did show was that the administration could use an executive order to bring a major firm into negotiations over its employment practices and future legal services. Every other firm now had an example of the terms it might be asked to accept.

Skadden agrees before an order is issued

Skadden reached its agreement on March 28, before the administration issued a punitive executive order against it. By then, other firms had already chosen to challenge their orders in court.

Elon Musk had publicly targeted Skadden on March 23 over its pro bono work in litigation connected to the film 2000 Mules. He wrote, “Skadden, this needs to stop now.” Skadden also had an EEOC letter, and the Associated Press obtained a message from executive partner Jeremy London saying the firm had learned that an executive order was planned.

So I wouldn't say Skadden settled because of a tweet alone. London said the firm had received a private warning. We don't have the underlying warning or a draft order to examine, but his message is part of the reporting. The firm agreed while facing that reported threat, before an order was actually issued.

Skadden pledged at least $100 million in pro bono services. Its terms addressed employment practices, outside employment counsel, and the fellowship program. They included funding at least 5 fellows a year for specified causes and considering political diversity in fellowship selection. The entire fellowship program wasn't being cut to 5 people.

Rachel Cohen had already tendered her conditional resignation on March 20, after the Paul, Weiss deal. She was objecting to Skadden's failure to stand up to what was happening across the profession. She didn't wait for her own firm to sign an agreement. That came 8 days later.

And on the day Skadden settled, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale sued and obtained temporary relief. Those decisions were happening alongside each other. Lawyers deciding how to respond could see firms negotiating and firms going to court in real time.

The other agreements

Willkie agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services on April 1. Reuters reported disagreement inside the firm and cited a source who said partner Doug Emhoff, the former Second Gentleman of the United States, favored fighting. Thomas Cerabino and Matthew Feldman were the firm's co-chairs at the time.

Milbank followed on April 2 with another $100 million commitment. Neither Willkie nor Milbank had been subjected to a firm-specific punitive executive order. Milbank had received an EEOC letter; Willkie hadn't.

On April 11, Kirkland, Latham, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman were announced together. Each pledged $125 million, for a combined $500 million. Cadwalader separately committed $100 million that day. Add those amounts to the earlier deals and you get $940 million across 9 firms.

Those dollar amounts represented promised legal services. They didn't tell us how much work had been performed, what rates would be used to value it, or who would receive it. All of that would determine what the commitments meant in practice.

The firms also negotiated different qualifications. Willkie's terms included a politically diverse pro bono committee and outside employment counsel. Milbank preserved room for its Cardozo initiative and expressly addressed representing clients against the government. Cadwalader referred to its intake process, conflicts, and capabilities. Leaders relied on those provisions when telling their lawyers the firms would retain control.

The joint April 11 announcement covered pro bono and other free legal services. That's broad enough to include work an associate might never have pictured when choosing a firm for its pro bono practice. Those commitments also ran beyond the administration's term.

The same 4 firms entered separate written EEOC settlements. The agency withdrew its March 17 requests and resolved the covered issues without admissions of wrongdoing. In return, the firms accepted employment-related commitments, restrictions on DEI terminology, and continuing certification and monitoring requirements.

Bloomberg reported that certifications would begin in July 2025 and continue every 6 months through January 2029. Information could be shared with the White House. So the relief announced in April came with years of continuing obligations.

Those settlements didn't provide permanent immunity from future discrimination complaints or ordinary enforcement. Skadden and Milbank were reported to have obtained separate EEOC resolutions, but we don't have the same complete terms for them. And although the 4 firms announced together shared an arrangement, there isn't evidence here that all 9 negotiated as a single group.

What Goodwin handed over

Goodwin wasn't part of the 9 White House deals. It did, however, provide information in response to the EEOC's request. Reporting described more than 200 pages, including roughly 150 pages of spreadsheets with fields such as race, sex, law school, GPA, office, and hiring outcomes.

Goodwin described the data as anonymized. That sounds reassuring until you consider how few people some of those rows could describe. The reported groups included 4 first-year law students in 1 program and 2 second-year students with a particular program background.

If you know someone's school, office, race, and program, how many people are you really choosing between? A name doesn't have to appear in a spreadsheet for someone to work out who it refers to. Former EEOC chair Jenny Yang warned about exactly that risk when the groups are so small.

I work with students who are trying to get access to opportunities like these. They share information because an institution asks for it as part of an application. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that applying also means they're comfortable with the firm assembling those details for a politically charged government inquiry.

We haven't inspected Goodwin's complete production, and the reporting doesn't identify a student who was actually exposed this way. The concern is that the remaining details could allow identification. That's why the EEOC's later statement that it received no personally identifiable information doesn't settle the issue. The agency's description of what it received and Yang's warning about what someone could infer address different questions.

And remember, the EEOC said responses to the letters were voluntary. Firm leaders were making a decision about other people's information. I'd want to know what they did to assess that risk before handing it over, especially when the people affected had so little influence over the decision.

What students and associates lost access to

The changes inside firms reached well beyond the agreements themselves. At Skadden, April reporting described cancellation of the remaining affinity-group events for the year. That's a loss people could experience immediately, even without knowing whether every group would eventually return. Later reporting described changes to fellowship applications, including the removal of questions about systemic racism.

Kathleen Rubenstein announced her resignation as executive director of the Skadden Foundation on June 4, after 6 years leading it. She said the firm had fallen short in supporting public-interest advocacy and expressed hope that it would respect the rule of law and the foundation's values. Founding director Susan Plum was reported to be returning temporarily. The fellowship program continued, but the person who had been leading it was publicly explaining why she was leaving.

DLA Piper discontinued employee resource groups, according to reporting on an internal message. It hadn't made a White House agreement and wasn't among the 20 EEOC recipients. Firms outside those groups were changing their programs too.

Greenberg Traurig also removed references to its affinity groups from its website, Bloomberg Law reported on April 8. The firm had listed 7 groups in its 2023 Vault diversity survey. That reporting confirms the website changes. It doesn't tell us that all 7 groups were discontinued internally.

White & Case discontinued its diversity-and-inclusion function while retaining affinity groups and moving responsibilities into other roles. Reed Smith adopted the name Culture and Engagement. Goodwin described changes involving SEO, Mansfield certification, and the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity.

Latham canceled its academy days before students were due to travel, replacing it with renamed online sessions, The Guardian reported. For students preparing to fly across the country, the in-person experience they'd planned around was gone with very little notice.

Of course a renamed department can still do useful work. But if I'm advising someone who was recruited through a particular program, I need to know whether that program still has staff, funding, and actual events. Keeping a name or a page isn't enough to answer that.

Reuters's July investigation found widespread changes to diversity language and some firms' descriptions of pro bono work. That showed how much public messaging had changed. To understand the effect on people inside the firms, we also need to know which opportunities remained available and which quietly stopped.

The associates who spoke up

Rachel Cohen was a third-year finance associate in Chicago when she gave Skadden her conditional notice on March 20. She explained her objections publicly, including on PBS, and testified at a Democratic bicameral spotlight hearing on April 7. She was asking firms to oppose the administration while their leaders were still deciding what to do.

Brenna Trout Frey, a senior Skadden associate, publicly announced her resignation on March 28. She later wrote about what presidential influence over pro bono choices could mean for the people who depend on that work.

Thomas Sipp resigned on March 31. In his April 4 WBUR interview, he explained that Skadden's public-service and diversity commitments were part of what attracted him to the firm. He also talked about student debt and helping support his mother. Leaving wasn't a decision he could make without thinking about money.

He discussed it again on The New York Times' The Daily on April 7. I think his account is worth listening to because he explains the decision in terms people can relate to. He'd joined a firm for reasons that mattered to him, and its agreement changed whether he felt he could stay. I've linked that episode in his Hall of Fame entry.

Andrew Silberstein left Willkie. Siunik Moradian announced his departure from Simpson Thacher hours after its agreement. Jacqui Pittman left Kirkland, and Sam Wong left Latham. Kirkland associates Kevin Decker, Maggie Hagen, and Harold Grigsby III also connected their departures to the firm's response. Taylor Wettach later described leaving Simpson Thacher in May when he announced a congressional campaign.

I want their names in this account because they made their objections public when doing so carried a cost. They weren't the people voting on the agreements. Speaking out gave colleagues and students information they wouldn't necessarily get from a firm announcement.

I also don't think we should turn that into a judgment of every associate who stayed. People have families, debt, immigration concerns, and obligations we may know nothing about. The leaders who made these decisions should answer for them. We can recognize the lawyers who left without assigning their circumstances to everyone else.

Rachel Cohen's work after Skadden

Cohen kept doing public work after the attention around her resignation. In May 2025, she joined Lowell & Associates as its strategic and external affairs coordinator. The new firm was formed to represent people facing government targeting and overreach. Brenna Trout Frey joined as counsel.

In June, Cohen received the inaugural Konrad Redeker Prize for Rule of Law, Courage, and Resilience. The German firm awarding it recognized her opposition to the administration's pressure on lawyers.

She also spent time explaining legal issues and organizing. Chicago Magazine later described her coverage of immigration-enforcement protests and litigation over the National Guard's deployment in Chicago. On September 30, she announced American Demands, a grassroots policy project developed with collaborators. She said it was collective work and that she wasn't announcing a run for office.

That continuation matters to me. A resignation can become a story about the job someone gave up, and then people stop following. Cohen used her legal background and the audience she'd gained to keep advocating after she'd left the firm.

It's why I include her and Sipp alongside the senior lawyers in the Hall of Fame. They didn't control a partnership vote or a large client relationship. They did have the ability to tell people what was happening and explain why they objected. They used it.

What the senior departures tell us

Senior lawyers left too, and their explanations varied. Joseph Baio, who had spent decades at Willkie and was then senior counsel, was reported to have left in protest. Cadwalader counsel J.B. Howard later explained firsthand that he'd wanted to stay but couldn't accept the firm's agreement.

Steven Banks left his pro bono leadership role at Paul, Weiss for work focused on frontline advocacy. In a later interview, he described considerations that went back to the election and urged people to focus on the president's conduct. His own explanation is more complicated than a simple resignation in protest of the deal.

Jeh Johnson's move deserves that same attention. His appointment as Columbia's co-chair took effect on April 24, 2025. The university announced his election and planned retirement on May 5, and he retired from Paul, Weiss on June 30. His statement expressed appreciation for his colleagues and a desire to devote time to Columbia. He didn't describe leaving as a protest.

Columbia then reached its own agreement with the Trump administration on July 23: $200 million over 3 years to the federal government and $21 million to settle EEOC investigations. The agreement restored access to federal research funding. Johnson and fellow co-chair David Greenwald welcomed it publicly. Columbia said it hadn't admitted wrongdoing and retained control of academic decisions. So he moved into university leadership before that institution reached a separate agreement of its own.

At Paul, Weiss, Karen Dunn, Bill Isaacson, Jeannie Rhee, and Jessica Phillips established Dunn Isaacson Rhee, and more lawyers followed. Their announcements emphasized independence and the practice they wanted to build. Reporting described internal dissatisfaction with Paul, Weiss's deal, but the founders didn't all publicly identify it as their reason for leaving. The firms also continued working together on some cases.

Damian Williams moved from Paul, Weiss to Jenner & Block, which had fought its order. His public comments about values are relevant, but they don't give us a complete account of his decision. At Cadwalader, Bloomberg attributed part of Kenneth Breen and Phara Guberman's decision to the deal, citing an unnamed source.

Reporting also described dissatisfaction among leaders of the 7-partner Willkie group that moved to Cooley. That tells us something about the group's leadership, without telling us what motivated every member. Ellen Holloman's move from Cadwalader followed earlier recruiting efforts. Bonnie Neuman's real estate finance group's planned departure was reported before Cadwalader's agreement.

I work in recruiting. People can have several reasons for moving, and the public explanation may only cover some of them. A departure after a deal is worth examining. To call it a protest, I want something connecting the person's decision to the agreement.

The firms that went to court

Perkins Coie won permanent relief in the district court on May 2. Jenner & Block followed on May 23, WilmerHale on May 27, and Susman Godfrey on June 27. All 4 challenged the executive orders and won at that stage.

The judges addressed the constitutional problems with punishing firms for their clients, lawyers, and legal positions. Those decisions gave the firms substantial protection. They also showed everyone watching that the administration's demands could be successfully challenged.

The lawyers who took the cases deserve credit too. Williams & Connolly represented Perkins, with Dane Butswinkas leading its courtroom challenge. Cooley represented Jenner, with Michael Attanasio among the team's leaders and CEO Rachel Proffitt supporting the decision to take the case. Paul Clement, Erin Murphy, and Joseph DeMott of Clement & Murphy appeared on WilmerHale's complaint. Donald Verrilli and Munger, Tolles & Olson represented Susman.

There was support beyond those teams. The version of the Perkins amicus brief entered on April 7 listed 518 law firms. Munger, Tolles & Olson and Eimer Stahl were counsel. Through an amicus brief, people outside the lawsuit can explain to the court why its decision matters to them. Those firms were putting their names behind the argument that retaliation against lawyers threatened the profession as a whole.

Arnold & Porter, Covington, Crowell, Davis Wright Tremaine, Fenwick, Freshfields US, Foley Hoag, Munger Tolles, and Keker, Van Nest & Peters were among the signatories, alongside hundreds of smaller firms and boutiques. The full appendix is linked on the page.

John Keker, Robert Van Nest, and Elliot Peters also urged firms to resist in a March 30 New York Times guest essay. William Bay, then president of the ABA, spoke against the intimidation of lawyers, and the ABA later filed its own lawsuit.

Neel Chatterjee founded and led Law Firm Partners United while he was at Goodwin. The lawyers participated personally, so the organizing shouldn't be credited to Goodwin as an institution. Later reporting described resistance he faced inside the firm. He moved to King & Spalding in July 2025 and subsequently spoke about values, lawyers' ability to speak freely, and the opportunity to build his practice.

I want people to be able to find these examples. If you're a young lawyer watching your firm's leadership say it has no realistic choice, it helps to know what other lawyers tried, who supported them, and what happened when they did.

Competitors, recruiting, and private conversations

Karp said competitors tried to take advantage of Paul, Weiss while it was under pressure. Congressional inquiries asked about recruiting and communications between firms. Reporting also examined efforts to organize a broader response and the intermediaries who helped firms reach the administration.

There are several claims that can get mixed together here: that a firm wouldn't provide representation, that it wouldn't join a collective response, or that it tried to recruit another firm's partners. Those involve different conduct and need different evidence.

The material linked here doesn't establish the specific claim that Kirkland was asked to help Paul, Weiss and refused. Kirkland, through W. Neil Eggleston, also denied trying to poach Paul, Weiss lawyers in the cited account. Sullivan & Cromwell's response about unsolicited recruiting approaches addressed recruiting, rather than every question about whether it offered assistance.

From my side of the business, it makes sense that instability would make some people more willing to consider leaving. But to say recruiting surged, we'd need to compare actual approaches or moves over a defined period with what had been happening before. A few visible departures won't tell us that on their own.

There's still a business problem here even without proving a recruiting surge. If you think your clients and partners will leave while your competitors carry on as usual, standing together gets harder. Settling can protect your firm immediately while leaving the administration free to put the next firm under the same pressure.

That's why the private conversations are worth understanding. The joint April 11 agreement and reported lobbying tell us some of what happened. Records of the discussions could tell us more about the alternatives firms considered and why a broader response didn't hold.

The pressure on companies around them

Law firms were advising companies that were making their own decisions about Trump. Those clients depended on approvals, contracts, and access to the government. What was happening in media and technology helps explain the environment firm leaders were operating in.

ABC's December 2024 settlement over George Stephanopoulos's statements about the Carroll litigation provided $15 million for a presidential library and $1 million in legal fees. The Jimmy Kimmel controversy happened later. In September 2025, FCC chair Brendan Carr's comments preceded affiliate decisions and ABC's temporary suspension of Kimmel. Carr denied that government pressure caused the suspension, and Kimmel returned.

The concern there is what a broadcaster understands when a regulator starts talking about its programming. The order of events deserves scrutiny, while Carr's denial remains part of the account.

Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement of Trump's lawsuit over the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris while the Skydance transaction awaited regulatory approval. Later in July, the FCC approved the transaction after commitments that included a news ombudsman and changes concerning DEI. The settlement and approval were separate events. Their proximity raises an obvious question about regulatory pressure, but there hasn't been a judicial finding in the material here that they amounted to an unlawful exchange.

Meta agreed to a $25 million settlement over Trump's suspended accounts. Reporting placed the discussions in the company's effort to repair its relationship with the incoming president. That context helps explain the settlement without making every later Meta policy change a term of the deal.

Amazon's inaugural contributions and financing of the Melania documentary drew attention too. Sam Altman and Tim Cook each made personal $1 million inaugural contributions. Those were personal donations, separate from spending by OpenAI or Apple. Stargate's announced investment plan and Apple's announced U.S. investments were business commitments, not donations to Trump's political operation.

For a company, accommodating a president may look cheaper than risking an approval or becoming a public target. Whether a particular arrangement crosses a legal line depends on evidence of what was demanded, what benefit was offered, and how government authority was used.

The Supreme Court's 2024 decision in NRA v. Vullo addressed the use of regulatory pressure against intermediaries over protected speech. It allowed a coercion claim to proceed on the allegations. It didn't decide any of these later disputes, but it helps explain why an official's influence over a business can become a constitutional concern.

I don't find the corporate comparisons reassuring about law firms. If other institutions decide it's easier to accommodate the government, people still need lawyers who can challenge it. That's a responsibility the profession can't hand off to the next industry.

How the work affects the decision

If you're running a transactional practice, your clients may be trying to get a deal through regulatory approvals, financing, and negotiations. They want you to keep it moving. A confrontation with the executive branch can look like a new obstacle, even when the government's conduct is plainly objectionable.

For a litigation practice, being willing to confront a powerful adversary may be exactly why clients hired you. Demonstrating that you're prepared to fight the government can strengthen the reputation those clients depend on.

I think that helps explain some of the different responses. It doesn't sort every firm into a neat category. Perkins had a substantial business practice. WilmerHale does transactional work. Paul, Weiss and Kirkland have major litigation businesses. Rachel Proffitt was a corporate lawyer when Cooley agreed to represent Jenner.

We also don't have comparable revenue figures showing that every settling firm got less than half its revenue from litigation. And transactional work isn't automatically more profitable. The economics depend on the clients, rates, staffing, fee arrangements, and the work available at the time.

What I'd want to understand is how leadership weighed the risks. Protecting current revenue can preserve jobs and client relationships. But if a firm is telling recruits that its commitments can change when they're expensive to keep, that has a cost too. So does giving future clients reason to question whether the firm will stay with them in a fight against the government.

Those losses are harder to estimate than a client threatening to leave this week. That doesn't make them less relevant to a decision about the firm's future. Trust is a large part of what a law firm is selling.

What came after the announcements

After the deals, the question became what the firms would actually do. The administration discussed using the pledged services for work involving tariffs and law enforcement. Cadwalader considered a proposal involving criminal appeals. Considering a proposal doesn't tell us that the firm accepted it or that completed work was counted toward its pledge.

Later reporting connected firms to the Commerce Department. Simpson Thacher's work was confirmed while terms were still being settled. Skadden was linked to the government's Intel investment. We still don't have a complete public accounting of the recipients, hours, rates, or credits against the commitments.

Some settling firms also continued taking cases against the administration. Reuters identified examples, which is relevant when assessing how much independence they retained. Those cases show they could still oppose the government in some matters. They can't tell us which other cases were discussed and declined.

Congressional Democrats sent several rounds of requests for records in 2025, comparing what the White House said with what firms told their lawyers. A watchdog later sued for government records. In October 2026, lawmakers again pressed Kirkland for information. These are efforts to obtain answers; the allegations in a request haven't become established facts just because lawmakers put them in a letter.

The court cases continued too. In March 2026, the administration moved to abandon its appeals, then reversed course. The 4 firms appeared before the D.C. Circuit on May 14. That's the latest appellate milestone verified for this account. I don't have a later disposition established here, so the victories I've described are the district-court rulings.

The student lawsuit over the EEOC letters ended with the February 2026 stipulation. That gave us the agency's stated position on voluntary responses and the information it received. It didn't resolve the separate concern about whether apparently anonymous data could identify students.

There's a lot that an announcement of a deal leaves unanswered. To understand what a firm agreed to, we need to follow the work, the continuing obligations, and the decisions its lawyers make afterward.

What I'd ask a firm now

If you're deciding where to work, I think this history gives you better questions to ask. If a firm recruits you through a fellowship or affinity group, ask whether it still operates and who is responsible for it. If pro bono work is part of the reason you want to join, ask how matters are approved and whether that process changed after 2025.

I'd also ask how leadership explained its decisions to associates. Were people able to raise objections? Did the firm answer them? A polished recruiting presentation won't tell you as much as an honest account of a difficult decision.

I understand that leaders were facing serious pressure. Clients could leave, revenue could fall, and other people at the firm could lose their jobs. I still think those leaders owe their lawyers an explanation of what they chose to protect and what they agreed to give up. Calling the choice difficult doesn't answer those questions.

And I want us to remember the people who made resistance possible. The firms that sued needed lawyers willing to represent them. Associates like Cohen and Sipp took risks without the authority or resources of a firm chair. Their accounts helped people outside those offices understand what was happening inside them.

Most people will never hire a firm on this page. They may still need an organization, a public-interest lawyer, or a legal team that depends on these firms' help. If that support becomes harder to obtain because lawyers are afraid of the government, the consequences extend well beyond Big Law.

These firms will keep asking students and associates to trust them. I'd like the people making those decisions to have the names, dates, and explanations in front of them, including the parts the firms would rather move past. That's why I put this account together.