Large corporate law firms have faced unprecedented actions by a presidential administration during the past two weeks, including five presidential executive orders targeting five law firms, a presidential memorandum directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “review conduct” by lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against the U.S. government and demand letters sent by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission targeting 20 law firms — 13 of them operating in Texas — seeking their policies and activities regarding diversity and inclusion.
The Texas Lawbook seeks your insight and commentary regarding how law firms and the legal profession should respond.
Some quick background:
In issuing the EOs, President Donald Trump said, “Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity.”
Three of the five law firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — have decided to fight back. Perkins Coie, which has about 60 lawyers in its Austin and Dallas offices, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago. WilmerHale and Jenner & Block each filed lawsuits calling President Trump’s EOs an “abuse of power” and they state their lawsuits are “absolutely critical to vindicating the First Amendment, our adversarial system of justice and the rule of law.”
Two other law firms — Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss — have chosen to cut deals with the White House.
In an agreement reached Friday, Skadden, which has 45 attorneys in Houston, agreed to do $100 million in pro bono work on causes that President Trump supports and promised to reform its diversity and inclusion practices.
Earlier this month, the EEOC at President Trump’s direction sent demand letters to 20 firms instructing them to provide the firms’ recruiting and hiring policies regarding DEI as well as information about any of their clients that impose diversity requirements on their outside counsel. The EEOC gave the law firms until April 15 to provide the information.
The response from Big Law and in-house corporate legal departments has been near silence.
How should lawyers and the legal profession respond?
With 16,000 paid subscribers, including more than 2,800 corporate in-house counsel, The Texas Lawbook is establishing an open forum for lawyers, general counsel, law professors and judges to provide thoughtful, substantive responses to seven questions in our survey. The questions address how firms should handle governmental inquiries into law firms’ handling of such matters, including pro bono immigration defense, diversity and inclusion and alleged government overreach in other areas.
The Lawbook has basic guidelines for your responses.
- Responses to each question should be limited to 150 words.
- No anonymous responses will be published.
- Comments must directly answer the questions before venturing off into related matters or explanations.
- There will be no personal attacks.
- You are welcome to challenge the very premise of the questions we pose and defend President Trump’s actions.
- We reserve the right to decline to publish comments..
The Lawbook seeks solutions and answers. Responses can be sent directly to Lawbook founder Mark Curriden at mark.curriden@texaslawbook.net or via this submission portal.
Here are the questions:
- What should be the response of lawyers and law firms to President Trump’s memorandum directing the attorney general to “review conduct” by lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against the U.S. government?
- What are the factors that lawyers and law firms should weigh when determining whether to tackle highly politicized issues such as asylum, DEI and other matters that may draw the ire of President Trump or other powerful government officials?
- Do the EEOC’s threats against law firms regarding their DEI policies and practices have legal legitimacy? Why or why not?
- How should law firms respond to the EEOC’s demands for information about their DEI policies and practices and those of their clients?
- What are the specific parts of DEI policies that determine whether they are legal or potentially illegally discriminatory?
- Some firms have decided to fight the Trump administration’s EOs, while others have reached settlement agreements with the White House. What are the proper responses and actions that lawyers and law firms should take when challenged by the administration for representing highly politicized clients in matters against the federal government?
- Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two members of the Bush administration suggested targeting corporate law firms that stepped forward to represent accused terrorists detained at Guantánamo Bay. In response, several high-profile corporate general counsel took public stands supporting the law firms that were doing the pro bono work. No one at the senior levels of the Bush administration ever took such actions. Do you believe that today’s corporate GCs should take similar positions, and do you believe that they will or will not?
Reminder: To submit your answers via the forum portal, click here
or email them to mark.curriden@texaslawbook.net.