President Donald Trump announced deals Friday with five law firms that will allow them to avoid the prospect of a punishing executive order and require them to together provide hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free legal services for causes his administration supports.
The resolutions reflect the Republican president’s continued success in bending prominent law firms to his will as they seek to cut deals with his administration to avoid being targeted by White House sanctions.
The latest firms to reach agreements with the White House are Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Kirkland & Ellis; Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; and Latham & Watkins.
The spate of executive orders directed at the legal community and top law firms over the last two months has been part of a broader effort by Trump to reshape civil society and to extract concessions from entities whose work he opposes. The orders have threatened to upend the day-to-day business of the firms by stripping their lawyers’ security clearances, barring their employees from access to federal buildings and terminating federal contracts held by the firms or their clients.
Since Trump levied the first of his orders, several major law firms — including WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block — have won court rulings that have temporarily halted enforcement of most of the provisions. But other firms have sought to avert punishment by striking a deal with the White House.
Paul Weiss was the first to do so, agreeing to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services and make other changes in exchange for the administration rescinding an executive order issued just days earlier. Other firms that have since cut deals include Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, as well as Willkie, Farr & Gallagher, and Milbank.
Some of the firms that have been targeted, including WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, have associations with lawyers who previously investigated Trump or have represented prominent Democrats. The first firm to face an executive order, Covington & Burling, employs lawyers who have provided legal representation to special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump and brought criminal charges against him between his first and second terms.
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