President Trump has tossed around many ideas about how elite law firms can fulfill their commitments to provide free legal work for causes he supports, among them fighting antisemitism, negotiating coal leases, hammering out trade deals and defending police officers accused of misconduct.
Greta Van Susteren, the conservative media personality and lawyer, had her own idea of how one of those elite firms, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, could make good on the pro bono promises. She wanted the large law firm to help a friend of a friend sue a local Michigan judge.
So Ms. Van Susteren gave the head of Skadden’s pro bono practice a call about her friend’s friend, a 47-year-old veteran, who she said had been unfairly issued a protective order in his divorce proceeding that violated his civil rights.
Skadden, Ms. Van Susteren said, initially told her that it could not represent this person and later offered in an email to play “some sort of support role” in the case. The current Newsmax host, who formerly worked for Fox News, was not satisfied.
Ms. Van Susteren took to X, the social media site, to blast Skadden, calling it “disgraceful,” and tagged Mr. Trump.
“I was annoyed, ” Ms. Van Susteren said in an interview. “I wanted them to actually help this veteran.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration agreed to spare Skadden and eight other large law firms from executive orders that could have crippled their businesses in exchange for commitments from those firms to collectively provide nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal work and represent clients from all political points of view.
Now individuals and organizations allied with Mr. Trump are starting to request that the firms make good on the free legal work they committed to perform, according to 11 people briefed on the outreach, including some who requested anonymity to discuss internal law firm business.
In an email to Ms. Van Susteren, reviewed by The New York Times, Skadden wrote that her request to help the veteran was one of “many outreaches for assistance” the firm had received “in the wake of our agreement with the White House.”
Veterans, in particular, are reaching out to large firms like Skadden, Kirkland & Ellis, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, having learned about the deals through media coverage and Mr. Trump’s posts on Truth Social.
Kirkland anticipated that news of its deal with Mr. Trump last month would lead to an influx of individual requests for legal help from the public, so the firm set up a separate email address for people looking for legal assistance, according to two people familiar with the matter. The firm also was concerned that lawyers and staff working on pro bono matters could receive threats and harassment from the public, another person briefed on the matter said.
At Paul Weiss, which was the first major firm to reach a deal with Mr. Trump, many of the requests have come from veterans, one of the groups that the president suggested the firms could help.
Some veterans have viewed the deals as an open invitation to ask for free legal work. In recent months, several have called Paul Weiss’s pro bono department asking for help on a range of issues, including their rental leases and medical benefits, two people with knowledge of the requests said.
Such requests are highly unusual for a large firm like Paul Weiss. Like many other elite law firms, it has typically relied on public interest groups to first review any pro bono requests before an internal law firm committee formally approves them. The idea is to make sure that pro bono resources are directed toward cases that will have a large impact.
Just two months after striking the deals with Mr. Trump, law firms are in uncharted territory. They are trying to make good on their pro bono commitments to Mr. Trump while not giving up their autonomy to choose cases or alienating their staff, who want to work on legal issues that broadly serve the public’s interest.
But the firms are unsure about how to satisfy the terms of their pro bono commitments, or how to keep track of the work that might qualify as part of those commitments, according to three people briefed on the matter.
While Mr. Trump has suggested certain issues and causes the law firms could help with, a White House official said the administration has not made any direct requests of the law firms to provide pro bono work to a particular group or individual. The White House official said he was not aware of Ms. Van Susteren’s outreach and declined to comment on it.
Still, some interest groups are trying to seize this unusual moment to obtain free legal work.
One of them is the Oversight Project, a conservative group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation. The group has sent letters to dozens of big law firms, including some that settled with the White House, asking each of them to provide up to $10 million in pro bono legal work to support litigation brought by conservative groups.
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, said some law firms had rejected his request without giving reasons. But he said some firms were continuing to talk to his organization “in good faith.” The Oversight Project focuses on investigating government activities that it believes are examples of the weaponization of the legal process.
Steven Banks, a lawyer who headed up pro bono for Paul Weiss before leaving a few weeks ago, said Mr. Trump and his allies were stretching the definition of pro bono legal services. Last month, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that said law firms could be enlisted to defend police officers who were “unjustly” treated in performing their jobs.
(William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, a coalition of police unions and associations, said he was not aware of any law enforcement group seeking pro bono help from one of the law firms that settled with the White House.)
Mr. Banks, who once ran the Legal Aid Society in New York, said he understood how some veterans might have gotten the wrong impression that Mr. Trump’s deals with law firms guaranteed them the right to free legal help from one of these big firms.
Even before the deals were announced, most big law firms routinely did work on veterans issues, such as working with groups that advocate for Gold Star families — survivors of service members who died on active duty. But simply being a veteran is not enough to qualify for free help, since pro bono resources typically go to those who have limited incomes or who have an issue that involves the government threatening someone’s rights or civil liberties, Mr. Banks said.
“Pro bono is about representing the less powerful against the more powerful,” he said.
At many large law firms, pro bono work can be an important tool to recruit lawyers who want to be part of a firm that does public interest work in addition to representing high-paying corporations.
But some large firms have begun to decline pro bono assignments that could be seen as challenging the administration’s policies on issues like immigration to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side.
At Kirkland, a group of junior attorneys have said they won’t abide by the pro bono terms of their firm’s deal with Mr. Trump. The lawyers have let it be known internally that they do not want to work on any matters that count toward fulfilling the firm’s commitment to provide free legal work as part of the agreement with the White House, according to three people briefed on the matter but not authorized to talk publicly about internal firm issues.
Skadden’s deal with the White House in late March to provide $100 million in pro bono work caught the attention of Chuck Lang, a high school friend of Ms. Van Susteren’s. In an interview, he said he had hoped she could use her connections to the White House — her husband works in the administration — to assist his veteran friend in Michigan.
Mr. Lang said that the veteran, who believed his civil liberties had been violated, fit the definition of someone deserving of pro bono legal assistance.
The veteran, Mr. Lang explained to Ms. Van Susteren, wanted help suing a judge who he said had wrongly issued a protective order against him in a divorce proceeding because his former wife works for the judge and is her friend. Under the protective order, Mr. Lang said, the veteran could not see his children without supervision or own a firearm. The veteran, Mr. Lang said, had spent over $200,000 in legal fees and supervision costs.
Suing a sitting judge under any circumstance is tough. But Ms. Van Susteren said she was hoping that Skadden would be up for the challenge.
Skadden suggested that the veteran first hire a local lawyer, outlining the firm’s reasoning in an April email to Ms. Van Susteren, which was reviewed by The Times.
“As we are sure you can appreciate, there are times when the legal needs of a prospective client are best addressed by other counsel who possess more specialized expertise or local experience,” Skadden explained in the email.
The veteran, the email continued, would be “best served with local counsel and our firm playing some sort of support role.” In a separate email to the veteran, which was reviewed by The Times, Skadden said once he had found a local lawyer that person should “reach out directly to us to discuss how we can best support their efforts.”
Ms. Van Susteren said Skadden should have provided more help. “Most people don’t know how to find lawyers and need extra help,” she said in an interview. “That task is something that they could have helped him do.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg is a Times investigative reporter writing about big business with a focus on health care. She has been a reporter for more than a decade.
Matthew Goldstein is a Times reporter who covers Wall Street and white-collar crime and housing issues.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
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