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Nevilledog

(54,664 posts) Fri Sep 19, 2025, 02:09 PM Sep 19

The lawyers who caved: Big Law firms finally have to hold up their end of a Trumpian bargain.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/law-firms-trump-deal-pro-bono

The law firms that capitulated to Trump are finally having to make good on their deal with the devil.

Back in March, when Trump first began to issue executive orders punishing law firms for associating with his personal enemies, it is likely that some of the firms yet to be targeted thought that they could avoid a similar fate. That’s probably what motivated 11 of the most prominent law firms in the country to seek out Trump and make deals with him despite the PR backlash that they suffered for doing so.

But for 10 of these 11 firms, these deals were preemptive — they were trying to stop something that hadn’t yet happened — which meant the deals they entered into were vague to the point of being nonsensical.

For example, when Congress pressed the firms for the details, one of them (Milbank) just told Congress to go look at “an internal email to firm personnel” that had been reprinted in a legal industry trade magazine behind a paywall — not exactly the response of a confident party. Another firm (A&O Shearman) quite literally told Congress that their entire deal consisted of what Trump had posted on social media — hardly a model of lawyerly thoroughness.

Presumably, the capitulating firms were hoping that these deals would prevent the same revocation of security clearances and cancellation of federal contracts that Trump had already leveled at other firms. But none of that was included in the vague contents of the deals, leaving it entirely unclear what these law firms were getting out of exchange.

*snip*