Law Firms
Recruitment of lawyers from Trump-targeted firms is ethics violation, Democrats’ letter says
Two Democratic lawmakers are asking White House counsel David Warrington and six BigLaw firms for information related to deals made with President Donald Trump to avoid punitive executive orders. (Image from Shutterstock)
Updated: Two Democratic lawmakers are asking White House counsel David Warrington and six BigLaw firms for information related to deals made with President Donald Trump to avoid punitive executive orders.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland sent letters to four firms that reached deals, as well as two others mentioned in a story by the New York Times on attempts to poach lawyers and their clients from one of the targeted firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Law.com, Law360 and Reuters have coverage.
Trump’s executive orders have targeted firms “for representing clients and advocating for causes that he abhors,” Blumenthal and Raskin wrote to the White House counsel. “As far as we can tell from public reports, these executive orders have turned into an illegal shakedown of the legal profession.”
Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp previously told employees that he had hoped that the legal industry would support the firm. Instead, “certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys,” he had said.
Seeking to profit by luring away Paul Weiss lawyers would, if true, be a violation of the ban on conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice in the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, said the letters sent to Sullivan & Cromwell and Kirkland & Ellis.
The letters ask the two firms for information about efforts to recruit Paul Weiss lawyers.
Both firms deny the poaching allegations, made in a March 26 story in the New York Times based on anonymous sources.
Within days of the executive order targeting Paul Weiss, “some of the biggest competitors were calling top lawyers at the beleaguered law firm—one of the nation’s most prestigious—asking if they wanted to jump ship along with their lucrative clients,” the New York Times reported. “Several firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell and Kirkland & Ellis, were looking to exploit the moment, according to five lawyers with direct knowledge of the poaching.”
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesperson gave this statement about the Paul Weiss lawyer poaching allegations to Law.com, Law360 and Reuters: “This allegation is completely false. To the contrary, our firm management made a deliberate decision not to approach any attorneys in response to the executive order,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
A Kirkland & Ellis spokesperson gave this statement to the same publications: “The assertion that Kirkland was among firms reaching out to Paul Weiss lawyers or clients and trying to recruit them is categorically false. That did not happen.”
Paul Weiss was one of four settling firms sent letters seeking information about the deals with Trump, according to an April 7 press release by Blumenthal. The others are Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
In the deals with Trump, firms pledged to devote millions of dollars in pro bono services to issues that the firms and Trump support. Firms also committed to merit-based employments practices and agreed that they won’t deny service to clients based on political viewpoint.
“If every law firm targeted by the president were to accede to his unlawful demands, the resulting threat to Americans’ constitutional protections would erode our democratic values and cherished civil liberties, as well as cost the legal profession dearly and for many years to come,” the letters to settling firms said.
The Trump administration has published five executive orders targeting law firms. Paul Weiss was one of them. The others were Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and Jenner & Block. All but Covington & Burling and Paul Weiss have filed lawsuits.
The executive orders typically called for suspension of lawyers’ security clearances, restricted employee access to government buildings, blocked government hiring of firm employees, and required agencies to take steps to terminate contracts with the firms and their clients—if the firm provided services in connection with the client contract.
“The courts that have considered these vendetta orders to date have universally ruled against them,” Blumenthal and Raskin wrote.
The order against Covington & Burling was less sweeping. It called for the suspension of security clearances issued to Covington & Burling lawyers who aided former special counsel Jack Smith and called for government agencies to end engagements with Covington & Burling.
According to David Schaefer, a Covington & Burling spokesperson, the order only affected the security clearance of one lawyer at the firm. And the firm is not a federal contractor, he said.
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Updated April 9 at 5:04 p.m. to clarify that the order targeting Covington & Burling was less sweeping.
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