Erin Mulvaney

I think it is a fear of just not being in the crosshairs, and that's why a lot of big firms are just trying to stay quiet, especially those that haven't been targeted at all at this point.

So many of these big, giant companies have federal contracts that are very lucrative. So that would be probably the most destructive to their business.

You might win in court, but at the end of the day, your law firm may not survive. And I think that's why there's so much fear and anxiety right now.

So the president has targeted so far three firms in executive orders. And in each one, he has attached the firm to a lawyer that has worked there or represented clients that were considered his political or legal enemies in various ways. And then the result is that the firm has security clearances removed. The lawyers at the firm cannot access federal buildings.

And the agencies are directed to remove federal contracts from any firms or their clients. So it's pretty sweeping. That's at least for two of the executive orders. One of them was a little more narrow, but that's why law firms are scrambling. It's pretty sweeping consequences of those orders.

At first, they were preparing to fight. They were hiring some really important litigation firms to back them and discussing how to put a lawsuit together. But instead, the chair also took this other path where he made his way to the White House and went to the Oval Office, met with Trump.

And they hashed out an agreement that would allow Trump to rescind the executive order in exchange for a few things like $40 million to certain pro bono services that the administration cares about, veterans and fights against anti-Semitism, and generally just a support for not taking on clients that are partisan. That's basically how we got out of it.

They're really trying to decide how to respond because there is a divide among firms' clients, which is usually the most important thing to them. as it's their business. Clients or some of them are asking them to support efforts to fight back against these orders. Others say, please stay out of this. We don't want the president to come after us.

And then they have the internal forces of the lawyers within the firm having different views on what the best course of action is as well. And in the meantime, they definitely just want to keep their heads down, not make big public statements or swings against the president and and his actions against the legal industry out of fear that they'd be the next target.

So Perkins Coie sued the administration over the order, and almost immediately they did get an emergency ruling from a judge who blocked the order from taking effect. So agencies can no longer... take those actions that I mentioned to stop their lawyers from entering buildings.

There is an order against that order right now because Perkins Coie will be suing and that litigation will continue in court. The broader concern is that this chill in the legal industry is quite unprecedented and there could be broad repercussions on firms across the board.