Biglaw Struggling To Deal With Trump Chaos

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

We are back with another edition of Thinking Like A Lawyer. I’m Joe Patrice from Above the Law. I’m joined as usual by my fellow editors. I’ve got Kathryn Rubino here.

Kathryn Rubino:

Hey friends

Joe Patrice:

And Chris Williams. What’s up? And we do this show every week to give you a little rundown of the biggest stories from the legal week that was in, from the pages of Above the Law. But first we always have a little bit of small talk, which we set off. Oh, with that sound small talk. Yeah. So small talk time. How is everybody doing this fine week?

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I mean,

Joe Patrice:

Not fine. That’s what I took away from that is the answer is not fine.

Kathryn Rubino:

The horrors persist, but so do I. Right. That’s I think the mantra of 2025 if there ever was one. But listen, this week is the St. Patrick’s Day week, so there’s some drinking to be had, whether or not it’s green colored, that is still an enjoyable pastime. I did see somebody who queried, and my daughter is still too young for this to be an issue, but said, when did St. Patty’s Day go from a holiday for us in theBar to a holiday for children with leprechaun traps and sparkles and all that kind of stuff. Apparently is now considered a typical childhood way to celebrate the holiday. And that seems horrifying. Well,

Chris Williams:

Yeah, I wasn’t aware for that transition that happened.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Apparently for elementary school age sorts of kids, you go around, you make a leprechaun trap, you got to load it up with sparkles so that the like a, I dunno, it seems like an elf on the shelf flavored variation on a holiday.

Chris Williams:

This has to be traced back to Anheuser Busch’s marketing department because why? Because it is a, it’s a drinking holiday. What’s next? And then we have the candy cigarettes to celebrate Saint Tobacco. Like No, that’s so goofy.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean, it is a step away from the drinking aspect, right? It’s all about the gold and the fevery and that sort of aspect of the holiday.

Chris Williams:

That’s how they get you. This is one of the few times where it was like if it was just inculcating Catholic themes and children, I’d be less appalled at it.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, I mean, it should be snake themed I think, if anything. Right. Maybe we’ll get reputation TV announcement this week. Okay. You’re both looking with blank stares. A lot of people are waiting for their announcement of the Taylor Swift reputation albums Taylor version

Joe Patrice:

Announcement.

Kathryn Rubino:

And the theme, or at least the emoji that is most associated with that particular album is the Snakes and St. Patrick.

Chris Williams:

Oh, she’s a snake.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, that’s what they called her for sure. When people thought that Kanye part of Kanye was a reputable source of information.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. That didn’t work out.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, that did not. She was, was absolutely Cassandra, that one. I mean, that’s a song that you wrote about it. It’s actually, that’s not my reference. It’s a fantastic song. But anyway, people suggesting that St. Patrick banish the snakes, maybe now we’ll get the rep TV because

Chris Williams:

Got you. Well, I knew there was a St. Patrick’s Snake connection, this whole Taylor Taylor’s first stuff. I’m just assuming you made up and no one’s going to correct you.

Kathryn Rubino:

I wish that I could be responsible for that, but No, I am not.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Whacking Day is upon us from

Kathryn Rubino:

Simpsons

Chris Williams:

Where you

Joe Patrice:

Kill the snakes, but yeah,

Chris Williams:

No one’s going know. Yeah. I’m glad you clarified,

Joe Patrice:

Which was No, I do remember. No, I mean that’s a pretty classic. That was of

Kathryn Rubino:

Course, well, old people remembered Chris as the

Chris Williams:

Yeah. No one who isn’t considering a RP membership will remember that they will whacking day and gooning days seems synonymous.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So

Chris Williams:

Anyway,

Joe Patrice:

So those of you who have embraced popular culture understand the Whacking Day reference. We’ll move on from that. And so we’ve been going for how long here, let’s close this off and get going.

Chris Williams:

Okay, before the close off, I did Google whacking Day. Oh

Joe Patrice:

No, Simpson,

Chris Williams:

The trumpet sounded Simpson Season four, episode 20. Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. So it’s like the early nineties though. That is a dated reference.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. But yeah, no, at least

Chris Williams:

30 years

Joe Patrice:

Ago. Yeah, Barry White’s in that episode. It’s great.

Kathryn Rubino:

You just remember these things. You don’t have to Google them that just lives in that brain, huh?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Alright, well yeah, because his sexy sultry voice is what?

Chris Williams:

Oh, that was the horn joke. Sorry. Can’t continue. If only we could.

Joe Patrice:

Oh yeah, no, I

Kathryn Rubino:

Hear you. Now we know why Joe Jealously guards use of the sound effect board.

Joe Patrice:

I don’t know what you mean. The sounds come from on high. I have no control over any of

Chris Williams:

Those things. It’s the closest thing Joe has to the segregating bar at the supermarket. So you can divide up your groceries from the other persons. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. It’s like

Kathryn Rubino:

That. I’ve never heard that referred to as a segregation bar, but I’m in.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, but a dark view of groceries, the old apartheid stick in Wegmans, you just slaps it down. Alright.

Kathryn Rubino:

Shout out to laugh. You’ll cry your eyes out.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, let’s move to our first story of the week if we can.

Kathryn Rubino:

I like that you called it the first story as opposed to the first 17,

Joe Patrice:

The first several stories.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Well, because it kind of dominated the week and that is the mess that Perkins Kuey finds themselves in.

Joe Patrice:

So at Above the Law, obviously we’re covering the legal industry as a whole, which is a broad portfolio. Nobody else really gets to everything. But that means we have been a little bit government centric because the administration is creating a lot of various legal fires. And so we cover that a lot even though we’d like to also be covering just as much what’s going on with big law. And now we can do both. So what is going on with the Trump administration and Perkins?

Kathryn Rubino:

So you’ll recall that the Trump administration issued an executive order stripping Perkins COE’s employees of their security clearance saying that they were going to initiate an investigation into their DEI practices and other sort of awful, and saying that the agencies had to cancel contracts with the firm. So they immediately, well, not immediately, I think it was a few days later, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration saying, I think the teal DR version is Constitution. You can’t do these things. Which as it turned out, was a pretty effective argument according to Judge Beryl Howell who was assigned to the case and the day after it was filed, held an emergency hearing on A TRO, they only challenged three of the five provisions. They challenged all the provisions in the lawsuit. But in terms of the TRO, it was only sections one, three and five. It was a two plus think it was almost three hours before it was all said and done a hearing on it, which I did listen to through the public access line.

And at the end of it, judge Howell read from her immediate granting of the TR O. So that was useful I guess. But the remaining question is what happens? I don’t think Perkins COE’s issues are over. Certainly not. The industry’s issues have only just begun because certainly Trump as a litigation party has proven time and time again that losses are not enough to deter him. So I’m confident we’ll see a lot of these arguments made Again repeatedly. The question is clients can choose. One of the things that was said during the hearing was that every day since the executive order was announced, before the TRO was granted, they’ve lost at least one client every day saying that We love you, we like you as our lawyers, but we can’t either. We have things that require government clearance or other things related to the executive order.

Joe Patrice:

And on that note, I do think, look, if Perkins Coy is one of the more outspoken as far as their political stance of big law, and so if you were working with Perkins Coy, you already were on board with working with a democratic party law firm. So I don’t think that people are walking away because oh, it turns out Trump doesn’t like you. We’re too scared of that. But I think you do hit on a key point, which is the security clearances. And I think people fail to understand how critical that is to large swaths of legal work. There are a lot of government contract work that requires some understanding of this for diligence purposes and all. There’s tons of national security, white collar work, defending people, whistleblowers and so on. So there are huge practice areas, especially for a firm that practices heavily in the DC area like this, that bank on having those sorts of clearances. I mean I believe Perkins was Perkins Coy historically like a Boeing lawyer I think. I believe so historically that if you represent any defense contractors, you are going to be in a position where your lawyers might need security clearances. So it is a very big deal to start unilaterally stripping folks of that.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I mean, I hear what you’re saying that the clients are fundamentally of Perkins Coy are likely on board with having Democratic aligned attorneys. But I’m not sure that you’re right at that means that the executive order doesn’t impact whether or not clients are comfortable having Perkins Coy as their lawyer currently. Because it’s one thing to say that this law firm either aligns with my values, or at least I’m comfortable with these values or anything like that versus saying that this has now put a target on my business and saying that either I’m concerned for my shareholders or that sort of analysis. Because we’ve seen with the targeting of Perkins Kuey and Covington before that this is a very vindictive administration, very distinctly from the first Trump administration and why do anything that might catch the attention of Trump? That’s fair. And I think that you may like what they stand for and want to support it, but just do not want the attention. And if you’re sort of a lowercase C conservative making these sort of cost benefit analysis, all of a sudden Perkins Coie may not be the right firm for you.

Joe Patrice:

Well, and this also hits on, I think the point you’re making hits another issue, which is the question of whether or not the courts have any ability to stop any of this.

There has been an ongoing argument over the last few weeks of people claiming that the administration is just willy-nilly ignoring court orders. There have been some more sanctimonious centris saying, Hey, say what you will about them. They have been appealing these orders. They have been complying, there’ve been other folks pointing to some of these funding issues and how the administration seems to be not complying. This is a good example of where the court administration is not complying with court orders. Not so much because with the TRO, maybe they are going to give Perkins back some security clearances, but the point is, this was already an issue with Covington. They turned around to do it here. They’re losing these orders, they’re turning around from losing these orders and doing it to Paul Weiss, which is the most recent thing that we haven’t even gotten a story up about that yet that just has broken as we’re recording kind of. But

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, one thing, just to be super clear, just factually, one of the provisions that was not subject of the TRO was the security clearance is one because there’s some case law about being national security related. That made it a little bit, I think of a harder pull for the firm. I think it was one, three and five. The provisions were very much slam dunks in terms of first Amendment in terms of due process. They were just super, super easy.

Joe Patrice:

Okay, but fair enough. But my point is that even if there is strict compliance with what’s happened in this order, the fact that the administration goes out and issues a duplicate policy towards another firm despite having just lost this one, is indicative of they aren’t going to be respecting these orders

Kathryn Rubino:

A hundred percent. I very much agree with you and I also think it’s a very much a warning sign for the industry. We’ve written a bunch of different versions of this story at this point, which says, why are big law being a bunch of, to quote George Conway pussies, why aren’t they? This is an attack not just against an individual law firm, but against the rule of law against normal business procedures for the industry, making sure that everyone has the ability to have an attorney that they’re choosing. All these sorts of really foundational principles of our legal system are under attack by the administration. Why aren’t the biggest law firms jumping up and down about this? And I think that you mentioned Paul Weiss is also seeing this blow back. I don’t think that’ll be the last law firm. I think what’s very clear is that this is not about any one person, attorney or firm. It’s about the entire industry. It’s about the way that we, it’s about the legal system as a whole.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. And it is one of those things where the legal industry can all get together and agree on what the bonus structure is, but seem unable to get together to agree that their colleagues shouldn’t have their security clear.

Kathryn Rubino:

And it’s true that people are finally starting to speak up. There was an open letter written by some associates that are asking people to get on board with that. There are definitely people kind of out there screaming, begging for the industry to do something, anything. But there are 200 firms that we roughly, at least 200 firms that we roughly call big loss or the AM law 200 and overwhelming silence considering the number of attorneys and firms that are very much under attack, the ones who are actually willing to say, please stop

Joe Patrice:

Troubling developments continuing to happen. We will continue to write about them, usually with some jokes involved too, so that you can laugh while you cry. We are going to take a break now this is like the proverbial, what is it? What’s the term apartheid wand that we decided this is dividing our segments. So we’ll do a commercial break here and be right

Chris Williams:

Back not to call whoever we’re advertising

Joe Patrice:

Apartheid.

Chris Williams:

Let’s not make that association. Don’t fuck the money up, which is the big hallway. Don’t fuck the money

Joe Patrice:

Up. So anyway, let’s take a break here and move to the next. Alright. Back also tangentially related to the administration because it is impossible to get away from. We have discussed in the past law firms who took the measure of kind of quietly scrubbing their websites of diversity references that continues as firms try to stay off of the administration’s vindictiveness radar by pretending diversity wasn’t a thing they ever don’t even know her. But an interesting development that we got recently or last week, slightly different than just removing references to DEI and so on. This was out of DLA Piper. It seems as though the firm used the IT department to global search and replace lawyers individual signature blocks that they use. For those of you who’ve used Outlook or anything, you can set your signature block and all your emails have that block at the bottom.

It’s the thing that gives your address and phone number and how to get ahold of other ways of getting ahold of you. They apparently global search and replaced those to remove anybody who had put their pronouns in their signature block. Which one was a policy that the firm was championing when Vault was ranking different firms on their diversity commitments that they did allow people to not use to list their pronouns in their signature block, but they’re gone. And part of the reason we know that they’re gone in the United States in addition to folks, and this was done without real warning, nobody knew this was happening. They just started, somebody started noticing that they were no longer in the signature block, which again, eagle eye because who looks at that thing? The whole point is you auto set it, you never think about it again. So somebody noticed

Chris Williams:

If it was a person who was going to look at that thing, it would be a

Joe Patrice:

Lawyer. Yeah, yeah, fair. Some folks started noticing it and the conversation and murmurs went around like what happened here? The most telling instance of it is apparently, apparently the problem with global search and replace is not everybody had put them in the same format. And so some folks started noticing that after their name, there were two empty parentheses where they searched and replaced the pronouns not realizing that would leave empty parentheses to denote that they just deleted something. This appears to only be happening in the US from Tipster. We hear that Canadian lawyers familiar with the firm still seem to have their signature blocks untouched. So this is another one of those obey in advance issues that’s a really disconcerting to start seeing. We had the canal gates one, we’ve got this. I think we have more coming up stories that we’re working on, firms that are doing some varying degrees of kind of cowardly withdrawal from stuff. We had the story, Chris, I think you were the one who wrote about the Vanderbilt Dean and Cornell among schools getting rid of their stuff. In contrast to say the Georgetown Dean who stood up to some bullying.

Chris Williams:

I will say my favorite genre of A DEI snuffing is these Control F stories

Kathryn Rubino:

Like

Chris Williams:

The

Kathryn Rubino:

Enola gay.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. They were trying to get rid of alien mission of gay, I dunno if I can say that four letter word anymore, but they got rid of pictures of the enola gay because that was one of the planes that dropped the atomic bomb. What I want to happen so bad, I want there to be some antitrust firm that tries to do this sneakily and just searches for, gets rid of anything that says she SHE, and it just fucks up all their Sherman Act stuff. Hopefully

Joe Patrice:

It understands where spaces go. Yeah, no, I definitely can see instances where these control F stories are going to be a real problem for folks.

Chris Williams:

That’s it. I think this is also a great opportunity for malicious compliance. So for everybody that had a parenthetical she slash her what have you, and just now just parentheses agree, that’s your new pronoun. Now don’t refer to me.

Kathryn Rubino:

There’s definitely some empty signifier postdoc paper that is just there waiting to be written.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Well it is one more kind of disturbing move to see an instance of this is a good follow on to the previous story. If a law firm doesn’t feel like they can, if a law firm feels like what they need to do is quietly without fanfare delete their associates compositions because they don’t want them to show up, they’re not going to be standing up publicly for other law firms if they’re already hiding.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. I think there’s also this sort of obeying in advance theme that’s happening that obviously this is a part of, but it’s also what the potential clients or current clients of the firms that find themselves under attack are also dealing with and seeing. And we’re going to figure out who actually is willing to make themselves a target potentially

Joe Patrice:

To the George Conway point. And

Kathryn Rubino:

That was also something that was just kind of circled to the other story, but that Judge Howell also explicitly referenced during the three hour long hearing that Williams and Connolly are the attorneys for Perkins EY in their case. And she explicitly said that it was chilling and terrifying to think that the whole industry that now Williams Conley has put a target on themselves because they are willing to take Perkins ey on as a client. And that is what we’re talking about, that health and the actual whole backbone of the legal industry being at risk here. That’s exactly what we’re talking about.

Chris Williams:

One quick point, I will acknowledge this isn’t particularly legal, but just to show that the economic consequences of everything being politicized isn’t just the right-wing pushback. Tesla stock is dumping really hard right now. Even if you, all the stories were like people with those armored trucks, those Tesla trucks putting Toyota on the back of them. So it’s all sorts of this sort of the weight of association happening. So that is something that has to be at the forefront of the people’s minds in the C-suite. We’re like, wait, do we really want to have our clients have as associated with X name or Y name?

Joe Patrice:

It is in fact down over a third over the course of the last month.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. Well, I mean, who was buying Teslas? It wasn’t a bunch of people who don’t believe in climate change.

Chris Williams:

Well now that the White House is a showroom, maybe things will change.

Joe Patrice:

As a technical matter, Trump claims that vandalism against these vehicles now constitutes domestic terrorism. We have not yet had a criminal case in which they attempt to use the death penalty provisions of the anti-terrorism act against someone for marking up a cyber truck yet. But yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

The

Joe Patrice:

Year is young.

Chris Williams:

And just for context, because the way that I like to think about criminal law is that these things are individual but they’re also in relationship to each other. Because if you’re getting five years for X thing, three, your other thing, being a domestic shooter and doing a mass shooting is not inherently domestic terrorism.

Joe Patrice:

We do not charge them under the domestic terrorism,

Chris Williams:

But take your finger and draw a dick button to somebody’s dirty Tesla window. You may be facing domestic terrorism charges. But as far as, I may be wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure Dylan Roof, who wrote a white power manifesto before he went to go shoot up a black church, was not charged with domestic terrorism. There are a lot of clan members that do not get charged with domestic terrorism, although there are people that are like, Hey, most of the terrorism that is happening is in these hate groups they’re not getting charged with. It’s much harder to charge ’em with domestic terrorism, but graffiti on a car that’s a terrorist. Now that’s ridiculous.

Joe Patrice:

There’s actually a whole article, I believe, I believe the just security people put out a whole article about the reasons why roof wasn’t charged under the Terrorism Act. So yeah, it is a little tripling that we’re extending it to protecting Cybert trucks. All right. And then the final issue, which still cannot escape this administration that we’re moving a little bit further down the chain of command. Ed Martin, who is the interim US attorney in dc, the one who Georgetown up for, as we’ve discussed in the past, not stood up for, stood up against, as we’ve discussed in the past, now has his first professional misconduct complaint on the new job.

Kathryn Rubino:

First of many we hope.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. This one lodged by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democrats who chronicled a few things, some of which we already knew about the issue where Martin as US attorney personally dropped charges against his own clients as from when he was a private

Kathryn Rubino:

Practice. I mean that is just an unforced error.

Joe Patrice:

Seems real bad according to what this letter to the disciplinary committee folks chronicles, it seems as though, at least from public statements made, it seems as though Martin has been in contact with other defendants, not necessarily people he’s represented hither to, but in contact with them about the process of getting their charges dropped, which the US attorney usually isn’t having parte conversations with defendants who are

Kathryn Rubino:

There were rules

Joe Patrice:

Being charged in addition to this. There’s been the kind of, I am going to use my office to prosecute anybody who gets mad at Elon Musk to continue our last topic. That is a letter that he’s written publicly. He’s made weird allusions on social media about believing that there are Logan Act violations all over the place, which Logan act is kind of like for house fans. It’s like the lupus of the law. It’s never

Kathryn Rubino:

Really that. Oh, that house. I thought you meant like House of Representatives fans who’s repping the house of reps these days.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. House like the TV

Show. Every condition. Somebody would be like, maybe this is lupus. It’s like it’s never lupus. And while normally I would say that the legal equivalent is Rico in this instance, I think the Logan Act may actually be even more, it’s not really a violation, but he’s making those, all of which generally according to this letter, some of which are more specific, some of which are just more specifically bad, like dropping charges for your own clients and others are more generically bad as far as undermining faith in the judicial process. Like claiming that you’re taking orders from Doge to prosecute people who criticize them. So that’s the latest on what’s going on there. This is also a guy who has, and this one is, it’s minor, but it’s troubling and this is a message that does make it into a footnote of this letter. He sent out a message claiming that they were Trump, that he was Trump’s personal lawyer spelled wrong. Trumps with an S, not an apostrophe. Well,

Kathryn Rubino:

There are lots of Trumps.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. But put aside the grammar issues, he signs this message that he put on social media as the US attorney for dc, which he is very much not. He is the interim and everything that he’s doing increases in small minuscule ways. The possibility that he doesn’t actually end up being the full-time person in that job. But he is already claiming that. And anybody who’s had to put LawClerk at the bottom of their signature blocks.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yes, I do remember that. And that weird kind of guilt you had when it took you too long to fill out the paperwork and everyone else was slowly who was on top of their shit, started changing their signatures at the firm. You’re like, goddammit, I guess I have to get on

Joe Patrice:

That. Yeah. You don’t get to falsely present what your job is. You have to be pretty specific about that. And so claiming that you’re the US attorney when you are not is problematic. It’s not necessarily the thrust of this letter, but it’s yet another thing that if I were certainly, if I were on a disciplinary committee, I would be concerned about this.

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure.

Joe Patrice:

You can’t make up what your job is.

Kathryn Rubino:

Again, there are rules.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. We actually have another story that not necessarily as important, but we did also, were tracking another story of a lawyer who is now going to be going to prison for claiming that, getting a bunch of jobs, claiming that he was a big law associate in the past, which he was not, which that’s a thing. It’s serious not to do that. You don’t have to do that.

Chris Williams:

It’s cool the types of jobs you can get when you lie.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Chris Williams:

Yeah.

Kathryn Rubino:

I wouldn’t know. Sure.

Chris Williams:

Well, I is a former NASA employee. Everything

Joe Patrice:

Alright, we good?

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Alright. Thanks everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show to get new episodes when they come out. You should leave reviews, write things, all of that. You should be following us on social media. I’m at Joe Patrice bluesky. She’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Writes for Rent. The publication is Above the Law dot com. You should read it both through Blue Sky and just generally, you should be reading Above the Law to read these and other stories before they come out. There are some other podcasts you can check out. Kathryn’s the host of the Jabot. I’m a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. There are other programs on the Legal Talk network that you should be listening to, and I think with all of that done, we’re done.

Kathryn Rubino:

Peace.

Chris Williams:

Peace.

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