Time for the legal world to wake up

An open letter to lawyers at large firms -- and to law students. It is time for you to demand that your firms and schools stand up to defend democracy and the rule of law.

Dear Lawyers¹ and Law Students:

No one has sympathy for lawyers. Even other lawyers do not sympathize with lawyers. It is one of the burdens of the second oldest profession to be roundly disliked by virtually everyone else, including one another.

However, we may have finally found an exception — especially if we are ready to stand up now for democracy, the rule of law, and dare I say it, each other.

The Trump administration is wielding the power of the federal government to target law firms that have taken actions opposed to Donald Trump as an individual as well as Georgetown Law School for its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — in an extraordinarily egregious set of violations of the First Amendment.

The executive actions against Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling are perhaps esoteric to non-lawyers, but they are absolutely devastating within the context of a top DC-based practice for clients with business before the federal government — stripping lawyers of their federal security clearances, and in the case of Perkins, even banning their lawyers from federal office buildings. All because of Covington providing pro bono legal work to Special Counsel Jack Smith and because of Perkins representing Hillary Clinton.

Georgetown Law School, just before the clouds of oppression began to swirl overhead.

The punishment being meted out to Georgetown is more plain: end your DEI initiatives, or we stop hiring any of your graduates for federal jobs. Never mind that Georgetown is a Catholic university and that it has based its DEI work in its faith and its Jesuit mission. And never mind that this blatant First Amendment violation is also being threatened against any law school that continues DEI initiatives.²

Yet somehow, the response to these attacks from other law firms and law schools has been virtually nonexistent. I would say “crickets,” except that crickets make far more noise than the firms and schools have.

One firm, Williams & Connolly (long one of the other top DC firms), has now stepped up to defend Perkins — and quickly won a temporary restraining order to halt the administration’s order for now.

Other large firms have been silent, as far as I know.

I am not aware of a single other law school that has risen up to stand with Georgetown Law.

The American Bar Association did issue a statement on March 3, but it has stood largely alone so far.

Where is everyone else? Where are the other official statements? Where are the petitions, the meetings, and the resolutions?

And this is before we even get to another glaring absence: the lack of Big Law assistance on the 25-30 cases challenging the administration’s many other illegal and unconstitutional acts. Where is the pro bono representation? Where are the amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs?

It is clear that the management teams of the large firms are fearful of being singled out the way that Covington and Perkins have been — and they are, perhaps, all waiting to see what everyone else is going to do. The law school deans are in much the same position, scared of being targeted, of acting too quickly and finding themselves without any safety in numbers.

We cannot wait any longer. We must provide the leadership and zealous defense of the legal profession and the legal academy that they are currently failing to provide. We must provide the courage to counter their fear.

And yes, Perkins and Covington and Georgetown are all large, wealthy institutions capable of defending themselves. But that’s beside the point. This is not about mere defense of institutional interest. This is about principle. This is about our deepest values. This is about lawyers and law students defending the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law itself — that we are a nation of laws, not the whims of a tyrant. Law will mean nothing in very short order if we do not defend it now.

The rank and file of a law firm or a law school hold enormous power — the schools’ budgets would be completely untenable without tuition payments, and the firms would collapse immediately without all the work of junior and mid-level attorneys. Lawyers and students have even more leverage right now, when talent is at such a premium.

Stand up for what you believe in, in sufficient numbers, and they will be forced to listen to you. The firms cannot afford to engage in mass firings right now, in such an exceptionally tight labor market. The schools cannot afford to punish students who speak their minds, when they are in a constant Hobbesian war of all against all for the top talent with the highest numbers.

Start petitions. Start small: get the first group of names, perhaps while pledging not to share it widely until it reaches 50 or 100 names, giving people peace of mind that they will not be alone. Hold town halls. Assemble gatherings. Vote on resolutions.

Take a stand.

We need not act too rashly at first. (We are lawyers, after all. Caution is our watchword.) The stated goals of petitions and resolutions may simply be for one’s law firm or school to stand in solidarity with Covington and Perkins and Georgetown. There does not need to be a retaliatory action against the administration just yet — although there may need to be one in the near future.³

For now, let’s start with the initial move of standing up. We must stand before we walk and walk before we run, but first, we must rise.

1. I am especially speaking to lawyers at large firms — and especially to the junior and mid-level lawyers at those firms, who make up most of the headcount and do most of the heavy lifting of labor at these firms. And no, it is not lost on me that there are few things more lawyerly than dropping a footnote to define the word lawyers.

2. And never mind that the perpetrator here, Ed Martin, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, seems more interested in exceeding his authority and job role to become the speech and viewpoint police in DC, rather than signing arrest warrants furnished to him by the DC police when, say, a member of Congress allegedly beats up his mistress. That will definitely be something we need to discuss soon.

3. And we will need to be methodical about what that is. For one thing, it is counterproductive to threaten that schools’ graduates will eschew working for the federal government; this would play right into the hands of the extremists, who will fill the positions with lackeys pumped out of unaccredited degree mills associated with the far right.