WASHINGTON — Texas lawyers — like the state’s corporate executives and political leaders — like to brag that they, like everything else in Texas, are bigger and braver and never back away from a fight.
But now, members of the Texas legal community are holding their cards close to their chests when it comes to President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms.
Hundreds and hundreds of lawyers from bar associations, law schools, legal organizations and law firms signed letters and petitions this week publicly decrying the Trump administration for targeting corporate law firms that have done pro bono work for immigrants seeking asylum, promoted diversity and inclusion efforts or hired lawyers connected to previous inquiries against President Trump.
But only two individuals and one organization were among the nearly thousand names signed to those public petitions are based in Texas.
In fact, leaders at a handful of corporate law firms in Texas said they found very little support among their competitors and colleagues, including corporate general counsel for some of their clients, for an effort to form a coalition that would seek to challenge the president’s executive orders and other actions in court.
“Every law firm is just running scared,” one senior partner in Dallas who spoke to The Texas Lawbook on the condition that he remain anonymous. “They all think if they just lay low, they can avoid the attention of President Trump and his lackeys in Texas.”
Law firms in Texas are proactively taking steps to avoid any attention related to issues.
Eleven corporate law firms have informed The Texas Lawbook that they will not respond to the news publication’s annual survey on their pro bono activities and diversity and inclusion efforts. All 11 firms completed the survey in past years.
Last week, three different corporate law firms stopped cooperating with Texas Lawbook reporters who were writing articles about pro bono cases — two were asylum matters, and one was a healthcare dispute involving a gay military veteran — that lawyers at those firms were handling.
Lawyers at the firms said they could no longer discuss their pro bono work because they feared being targeted by the president or his political supporters if they publicly promote their pro bono activities.
How Should Lawyers, Firms and GCs Respond
to President Trump’s Challenges?
The fear or nervousness over President Trump’s executive orders became even more evident Friday when one of the most successful and powerful corporate law firms on Wall Street, Skadden Arps, reached an agreement with the White House to avoid being the next target of an EO. 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.
“The firm looks forward to continuing our productive relationship with President Trump,” Jeremy London, Skadden’s executive administrative partner, said in a written statement.
So far, President Trump has signed five EOs targeting law firms. In doing so, he accused the law firms of “Lawfare” and being part of weaponizing the government.
“Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity,” President Trump said in signing the EOs.
Earlier in the week, one of the five law firms targeted by President Trump, Paul Weiss, a global corporate law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers and revenues exceeding $2 billion, reached an out-of-court settlement agreement with the Trump administration, with the firm’s chairman stating that the “executive order could have easily destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people and our clients.” Paul Weiss has been trying to open an office in Houston for the past two years but has not yet done so.
Late Thursday, President Trump signed a fifth executive order targeting a large law firm — this time against the New York corporate firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. The executive order cites WilmerHale’s pro bono work for immigrants seeking asylum and voting rights groups. The EO suspends security clearances for the firm’s lawyers, prohibits its lawyers from entering federal buildings and terminates any government contracts with the firm. The EO also states that WilmerHale should be investigated for its diversity and inclusion efforts.
Three of the five law firms hit with presidential executive orders — 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.”
In a late development Friday, a federal judge issued a TRO preventing parts of President Trump’s EO against Jenner & Block from taking effect, stating that the president violated the law firm’s First, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
Earlier this month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at President Trump’s direction sent demand letters to 20 law firms — 13 of them operating in Texas — 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.
On Wednesday, the American Bar Association and 55 other state and local bar associations signed a letter stating that there “are clear choices facing our profession.”
“We can choose to remain silent and allow these acts to continue or we can stand for the rule of law and the values we hold dear,” the letter states.
Not a single Texas bar organization signed the letter.
Earlier in the week, more than 700 lawyers and legal advocates, including some high-profile conservative judges, signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her “to use all of the tools available to you to preserve and protect the independence and integrity of the legal profession, including opposing the use of the federal government to attack lawyers, law firms, and legal organizations for engaging in good faith representation of their clients.”
“Attacking legal advocates based on the positions they take in good faith litigation or based on who their clients are or have been is inconsistent with our nation’s values and with the Constitution’s contemplation of the functioning of the judicial branch.”
The petition was signed by 160 legal organizations and more than 700 lawyers. The Texas Immigration Law Council is the sole organization from Texas that signed the petition, and University of Texas Law Professor David B. Spence was among the individuals who penned his name in support.
And finally, 79 law school deans issued a joint letter this week stating that “the government should not punish lawyers and law firms for the clients they represent, absent specific findings that such representation was illegal or unethical.”
“Punishing lawyers for their representation and advocacy violates the First Amendment and undermines the Sixth Amendment,” the deans wrote.
Of the 10 law schools in Texas, only University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law Dean Angela Felecia Epps signed the letter.