More than 80 former employees of Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom sent a letter to the law firm on Friday expressing “deep outrage” over its decision to reach an agreement with Donald Trump in order to avoid an executive order punishing the firm.
Skadden, a top-ranked law firm, reached an agreement, announced on 28 March, to commit at least $100m in pro-bono services to causes both the firm and the president support, including assisting veterans, law enforcement, local government officials and combatting antisemitism. The agreement also says Skadden won’t engage in race-based hiring.
In exchange, Skadden will avoid being the subject of one of Trump’s executive orders punishing law firms. The president has issued orders targeting several firms, threatening to cripple them by revoking security clearances, barring attorneys from access to government buildings, and forcing clients to disclose their relationship to the firm if they do business with the government.
Experts see Trump’s efforts to intimidate lawyers from taking on cases adverse to the president’s interests as deeply anti-democratic, and employees and former employees of many of the firms targeted by the president have pushed back.
“As attorneys, we all took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States,” the letter from former Skadden employees said. “As one of the country’s most powerful and most profitable law firms, Skadden’s influence over the legal profession cannot be understated. In light of Skadden’s position, it is outrageous and self-interested that rather than fulfilling the legal profession’s oath and standing in solidarity with fellow law firms that were fighting to uphold the Constitution, Skadden caved to bullying tactics instead.”
Many of the country’s biggest and most profitable firms have stayed largely silent on the executive orders. The firms, which include places like Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore – notably did not join more than 500 US law firms that signed onto an amicus brief on Friday in support of a challenge to the order.
“Those Orders pose a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself. The judiciary should act with resolve – now – to ensure that this abuse of executive power ceases,” said the brief, which was authored and signed by Donald Verrilli Jr, who served as the solicitor general under Barack Obama.
Skadden reached the preemptive agreement after Perkins Coie, another firm targeted by Trump, successfully got a court to issue an injunction blocking most parts of the order. Skadden’s agreement was also announced the same day two other prominent firms, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, sued over executive orders targeting them. Both firms were also able to secure court orders blocking most of the provisions in Trump’s orders against them.
Some lawyers at major law firms have been so angry over the position their employers have taken that they have quit.
“I believe, as I know many of you do, that what the current presidential administration is doing is wrong,” Thomas Sipp, a Skadden associate, who quit this week wrote in a departure email. “That we are sliding into an autocracy where those in power are above the rule of law. Skadden’s agreement with the Trump administration sent our country deeper down this descent.”
Law students and attorneys are also closely monitoring which firms are heeding Trump. A spreadsheet circulating online lists more than a dozen firms who have taken action to accommodate the administration in some way, even if they haven’t been targeted.
One first-year law student at one of the country’s top law schools told the Guardian on Thursday that he was tracking how firms were responding and it was influencing where they were applying for a job.
Skadden’s capitulation, the alumni wrote in their letter, had only paved the way for Trump to further bully other firms into settling. Two other firms, Wilkie, Farr, and Gallgher and Milbank LLP have also reached preemptive deals with Trump.
“We were shocked to hear about Skadden’s concessions, concessions given under the threat of an executive order whose substance had already been blocked by a federal court,” the letter said. “The deals Willkie Farr and Milbank struck with President Trump this week evinces the deeply disturbing behavior that Skadden helped normalize.”
The agreement also takes aim at the firm’s prestigious Skadden fellowship, in which 25 to 30 lawyers a year from the nation’s top law schools work on social justice issues. Under the agreement with Trump, lawyers in the fellowship have to “represent a wide range of political views, including conservative ideals”. At least five lawyers from the fellowship have to be assigned to “assisting Veterans; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; combatting Antisemitism, and other similar types of projects”.
“As alumni who have proudly represented Skadden in a variety of practice areas, we call on you to clearly affirm the firm’s commitment to reject the administration’s attacks on the judiciary, the Constitution, and rule of law before it’s too late,” the letter said.
