Careers
Resignations multiply at BigLaw firms that made deals with Trump
Associate Rachel Cohen may have been the first lawyer to resign from a law firm because she disagreed with its response to President Donald Trump’s punitive executive orders, but she isn’t the last. (Image from Shutterstock)
Associate Rachel Cohen may have been the first lawyer to resign from a law firm because she disagreed with its response to President Donald Trump’s punitive executive orders, but she isn’t the last.
Cohen is one of at least nine lawyers who have left six out of nine firms that reached deals with Trump, according to reporting on resignations by Law.com, the New York Times, Reuters (here and here) and Above the Law.
Cohen was a finance associate in the Chicago office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She left the firm after it refused her call to support Perkins Coie in its lawsuit challenging an executive order that, among other things, barred its lawyers from government buildings and imperiled its representation of government contractors.
Then when Skadden reached an agreement with Trump to avoid becoming a target, two more associates left.
These nine firms have reached agreements to avoid executive orders similar to the one against Perkins Coie: Skadden; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Latham & Watkins; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.
The deals call for firms to provide pro bono legal services to projects supported by the firms and Trump. The amounts pledged range from $40 million to $125 million.
According to the articles, lawyers who left are:
• Rachel Cohen, who left Skadden (ABAJournal.com, Law.com)
• Brenna Trout Frey, who left Skadden (ABAJournal.com, Above the Law, Law.com)
• Thomas Sipp, who left Skadden (ABAJournal.com, Above the Law, the New York Times, Law.com)
• Sam Wong, who left Latham (Law.com, Reuters)
• Siunik Moradian, who left Simpson Thacher (Law.com, Bloomberg Law, Above the Law, Reuters)
• Jacqui Pittman, who left Kirkland (Law.com)
• Joseph Baio, who left Willkie (Law.com, Reuters)
• Andrew Silberstein, who left Willkie (Law.com, Reuters)
• Steven Banks, who left Paul Weiss, where he was the pro bono practice leader. He said he has wanted to leave since the November election to wage a fight for “the things that I have believed in”. He did not specifically mention the firm’s deal with Trump. (Law.com, the New York Times)
The executive orders issued against firms typically seek the suspension of security clearances for their lawyers; restrict access to government buildings by their employees; ban government hiring of firm employees; require government contractors to disclose whether they do business with the firms; and call for termination of government contracts for which firms were hired to provide services, including clients’ government contracts.
In a message to employees, Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp said the firm reached an agreement with Trump to avoid an “existential crisis” that could have destroyed the firm. Even if it mounted a successful legal challenge, Karp said, its clients would still perceive the firm as “persona non grata with the administration.”
Four firms have sued over executive orders issued against them. They are Perkins Coie, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey. All have obtained temporary restraining orders blocking parts of the executive orders.
Perkins Coie lost the vice chair of its government contracts practice after the firm sued. That lawyer, Alexander Canizares, is departing to become co-leader of the government contracts practice at Vinson & Elkins. Canizares told Reuters that he began talking to Vinson & Elkins “quite a while ago.”
Above the Law has published a “BigLaw Spine Index” that lists how firms have responded to the Trump administration.
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