Large corporate law firms have faced unprecedented actions by a presidential administration during the past two weeks, including five presidential executive orders targeting five law firms, a presidential memorandum directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “review conduct” by lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against the U.S. government and demand letters sent by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission targeting 20 law firms — 13 of them operating in Texas — seeking their policies and activities regarding diversity and inclusion.
The Texas Lawbook seeks your insight and commentary regarding how law firms and the legal profession should respond.
Some quick background:
In issuing the EOs, President Donald Trump said, “Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity.”
Three of the five law firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — have decided to fight back. Perkins Coie, which has about 60 lawyers in its Austin and Dallas offices, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago. WilmerHale and Jenner & Block each filed lawsuits calling President Trump’s EOs an “abuse of power” and they state their lawsuits are “absolutely critical to vindicating the First Amendment, our adversarial system of justice and the rule of law.”
Two other law firms — Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss — have chosen to cut deals with the White House.
In an agreement reached Friday, Skadden, which has 45 attorneys in Houston, agreed to do $100 million in pro bono work on causes that President Trump supports and promised to reform its diversity and inclusion practices.
Earlier this month, the EEOC at President Trump’s direction sent demand letters to 20 firms instructing them to provide the firms’ recruiting and hiring policies regarding DEI as well as information about any of their clients that impose diversity requirements on their outside counsel. The EEOC gave the law firms until April 15 to provide the information.
The response from Big Law and in-house corporate legal departments has been near silence.
How should lawyers and the legal profession respond?
With 16,000 paid subscribers, including more than 2,800 corporate in-house counsel, The Texas Lawbook is establishing an open forum for lawyers, general counsel, law professors and judges to provide thoughtful, substantive responses to seven questions in our survey. The questions address how firms should handle governmental inquiries into law firms’ handling of such matters, including pro bono immigration defense, diversity and inclusion and alleged government overreach in other areas.
The Lawbook has basic guidelines for your responses.
- Responses to each question should be limited to 150 words.
- No anonymous responses will be published.
- Comments must directly answer the questions before venturing off into related matters or explanations.
- There will be no personal attacks.
- You are welcome to challenge the very premise of the questions we pose.
- We reserve the right to decline to publish comments.
