WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the powerful law firm Paul Weiss caved.
It agreed to give Donald Trump’s administration $40 million in free legal work for causes the president supports and, according to a social media post from Trump, get rid of any internal diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
In response, Trump rescinded his executive order that targeted the firm and could have cost it significant business.
The agreement shocked many in the legal community, and for Rachel Cohen, an associate at another large firm — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP — it was the final straw.
On Thursday night, Cohen fired off an email to her firm that said she was giving her two-weeks’ notice, unless leaders there agreed to a number of conditions that would, in effect, stand up to the Trump administration — including by refusing to cooperate with the targeting of DEI programs.
“This is not what I saw for my career or for my evening, but Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation and staffing has forced my hand,” Cohen wrote in her firmwide email, which went viral on social media after she shared it publicly. “We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here.”
Representatives for Paul Weiss, Skadden and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment.
Cohen told NBC News on Friday that her calculus wasn’t whether her letter was going to backfire, nor was it whether she was going to be fired. (Cohen said her email access was suspended soon after she sent her letter.)
Her key question was: “Is this going to be unhelpful to the aim that I am working towards, which is the protection of not just my colleagues, but the rule of law in the United States of America? Because the stakes really are that high.”
Cohen said she consulted with a family member and had a close friend from law school look over her draft. And then she pushed send.
One of the challenges, Cohen said, is that this administration is able to inflict permanent damage before the court system has a chance to catch up.
“They move so quickly that you have to make judgment calls — that can cost you a lot — off of what you think is going to happen next, because you do not have time to wait it out and see what happens next, you will be too far behind,” she said.
Cohen said she didn’t want to be in this position and wishes she weren’t. She believes “a coup” is happening in America right now. She wishes the most powerful attorneys in the country had immediately banded together and decided to send a clear message that Trump’s actions were unacceptable.
“We are in this moment where the president is testing what he can get away with and whether the structures that we have in this country that are supposed to prevent us from having a dictator will hold,” she said. “We are not the first or the biggest line of defense. The big law firms are not going to save us, but we are a brick in a wall, and we’re pretty close to the bottom.”
Cohen’s message highlighted conversations that are happening behind the scenes at law firms and within the Justice Department in the chaotic two months since Trump took office.
Trump has directly targeted corporate law firms by issuing executive orders that either strip lawyers of security clearance or prevent them from working with the federal government.
The decision by Paul Weiss sent shockwaves through the corporate legal world, with lawyers worrying that it emboldens the administration to take similar action against more firms.
One lawyer with a large firm in Washington said the move by Paul Weiss to make a deal was “as craven and despicable a decision as you will find.”
The agreement “will make other law firms more scared” and less likely to publicly stand up for the profession, said the lawyer, who, like others in this article, requested anonymity out of fear of retribution.
Any joint effort by firms to make a public stand against Trump has so far fizzled, although there is an ongoing discussion among firms over filing an amicus brief in a case brought by Perkins Coie against an executive order Trump issued targeting that firm, the lawyer said. Reluctance about speaking up is driven mostly by commercial interests, namely the fear of losing clients, the lawyer added.
“The conversations are happening at the firms. The people that I know in the law will say out loud, ‘This is what is happening.’ And they are just scared, and they’re hiding behind notions of fiduciary duty,” Cohen said.
A lawyer at another major law firm said the justification their firm has used for keeping its head down is that it needs to keep its management team happy — not look out for the welfare of the country. The lawyer said the Trump administration’s goal appeared to be to bankrupt several of the big law firms.
George Conway, a frequent Trump critic and a former partner at a major law firm, told NBC News that firms need to look beyond the bottom line.
“They have a moral duty to defend the very system that has allowed them to make the kind of money that they make. These law firms are now basically so profit-driven that they are putting their own economic interests…above the system,” Conway said. “That to me is not only morally appalling and morally fraught and just contemptible, but at the end of the day, self-defeating.”
Asked by NBC News what message she had for those in positions of power who are staying quiet, Cohen said: “Their silence is not only not going to protect them, it is going to kill people.”
At the Justice Department — with lawyers being fired or reassigned if they worked on cases or in areas that are not what the Trump administration wants — lawyers looking for the exits are finding a tough job market.
“Everyone is now constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering if they say the wrong thing to the wrong person or in a monitored chat they could lose their job,” a Justice Department attorney said. “If they don’t work cases that are ‘aligned with Trump’s priorities’ they could lose their job. If they touch a case against a person with certain political affiliations or connections to the White House, they could lose their job.”
Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney with a focus on national security law, said that he had a “wave of emotions” over the Paul Weiss decision, from “intense anger to intense sadness about how pathetic” he thought the decision was.
Zaid said the targeting of law firms reminded him of a line from Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” in which a character named Dick the Butcher says, “Let’s kill all the lawyers.”
“Everybody always looks at that statement as if it is an assault, attack, insult against lawyers,” Zaid said. “It’s actually quite the opposite, because Dick the Butcher was an authoritarian who was trying to take power, and he had to kill all the lawyers because the lawyers were the only ones who could get in his way and stop him. And I think what Trump is doing is exactly that.”
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