When President Donald Trump issued an executive order this month targeting Susman Godfrey, one of the nation’s preeminent law firms, the way forward was clear.
The order came as a “total bolt from the blue,” one lawyer representing the firm said later during a court hearing. No one at Susman Godfrey spoke with the White House about cutting a deal, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The firm was ready to fight.
The partners unanimously agreed the firm would sue the United States government to block the executive order within two hours of reviewing it, the two people said.
In Trump’s political campaign against Big Law, nine firms have struck deals with the president, collectively promising $940 million in pro bono work. Four — Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — opted to fight the administration in court.
More than a month into Trump’s war on Big Law, there is little evidence those four firms have suffered serious consequences for choosing to fight.
In each of the four lawsuits, federal judges quickly blocked the most consequential elements from each executive order and signaled they would later rule in favor of the law firms.
The judge’s swift order headed off potential damage to Jenner & Block, according to a source familiar with the matter. Forty percent of the firm’s revenue is from companies with government contracts, it said in its lawsuit. While clients were nervous, only one, which it had represented on a pro bono basis, cut ties, the source said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Perkins Coie’s biggest clients, including Amazon and Boeing, are sticking with the firm, although it lost some work from Honeywell. William Malley, the firm’s managing partner, told The American Lawyer that he sees “momentum” in business this year after the firm’s average profit per equity partner grew by nearly 16% in 2024.
It’s not clear whether WilmerHale or Susman Godfrey lost any clients. Both said in court filings that Trump’s executive orders would harm their businesses, but they did not provide any examples of clients leaving or refusing to do business.
Trump is getting hammered in court
In court, the law firms fighting back are winning.
They have argued that the executive orders violate the Constitution and are textbook examples of the government illegally targeting people and companies over their speech and violating their clients’ right to counsel.
The executive orders say the law firms run discriminatory DEI programs and that some of them pose national security threats because they employed lawyers who previously investigated Trump.
Justice Department lawyers argued that Trump’s powers are too broad for a judge to block the orders, and that the judicial branch can’t even force the White House to explain itself.
In a hearing on April 23, US District Judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing Perkins Coie’s case, appeared incredulous at the government’s arguments. She subjected Richard Lawson, a Justice Department lawyer, to a barrage of often sarcastic questions about the scope of the executive order, brushing aside some of his positions as “hyper-technical legal arguments that may have no merit.”
On the docket, meanwhile, the administration is outgunned.
The two lawyers representing the government are Chad Mizelle, US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, who worked in the first Trump administration and at a pair of elite law firms, and Lawson, who joined the Justice Department after a stint at a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller.
Two other career Justice Department officials previously working on the Perkins Coie case dropped out, one to retire.
Representatives for the Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The firms suing the government are working with legal heavyweights. Perkins Coie picked Williams & Connolly; Cooley LLP is representing Jenner & Block; the conservative legal superstar Paul Clement is representing WilmerHale; and Susman Godfrey hired Munger Tolles, the elite law firm that organized an earlier legal brief arguing against Trump’s executive orders.
Each lawsuit has also attracted a wide range of amicus briefs — supportive legal arguments — from law professors, former judges, bar associations, press freedom advocates, and others.
“You’re a bit outmanned here,” Judge Loren AliKhan quipped at Lawson when he showed up alone to a hearing in Susman Godfrey’s case earlier this month.
Will the deals last?
Trump’s executive orders could have revoked each firm’s government contracts and lawyers’ security clearances. They also could have barred firm employees from government buildings, and Judge AliKhan said Trump’s order meant the lawyers would not be able to enter courthouses or post offices.
Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss, the first firm Trump targeted, described the executive order as an “existential crisis” that “could easily have destroyed our firm” in an internal memo explaining why he chose to strike a deal with the president.
The firms that made deals with the White House — Paul Weiss, Skadden, Milbank, Willkie Farr, Cadwalader, Kirkland & Ellis, A&O Shearman, Simpson Thacher, and Latham & Watkins — are in Trump’s good graces for now.
Their agreements may not be stable, though, and the terms of each deal remain vague. It’s also unclear whether there are more detailed underlying agreements that spell out each firm’s responsibilities. If any firm challenges the Trump administration in court or picks up a client Trump objects to, he could issue a new executive order.
“If he has a different interpretation than the firms, he can bring them in line by issuing an executive order,” Nate Eimer, an attorney representing over 800 firms opposing the executive orders, said of Trump. Firms that settled, he said, “put themselves in a very, very difficult position.”
The White House has not answered questions about whether nonpublic agreements exist. None of the firms that made deals responded to requests for comment. Representatives for WilmerHale declined to comment. Perkins Coie did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump has openly mused about using the law firms for various purposes. In a televised Cabinet meeting a week after he announced sweeping tariffs, he said they could negotiate trade deals.
Mike Howell, who runs The Oversight Project, a group spun out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, sent letters to many law firms — including some Trump hasn’t targeted — asking them to devote $10 million worth of time to help litigate freedom of information lawsuits against agencies in “blue states.”
“I’m dealing at my level with the managing partners, some of whom have responded very quickly,” Howell said. “Some have said, in the nicest way possible, ‘Buzz off.'”
An atmosphere of fear
The decisions to fight or cut a deal have opened enormous rifts within the legal profession.
Divisions have emerged between litigators and dealmakers, between equity-holding partners and idealistic associates, and between big firms with centralized decision-making processes and more democratic small partnerships.
“Paul Weiss — if they hadn’t caved, we might’ve had a chance,” Sean Burke, a legal headhunter with Whistler Partners, said. “It was like the straw that broke the camel’s back before it even started.”
The leader of Paul Weiss’ pro bono practice quit, although he said his career change had been in the works for months. A top government contracts lawyer at Perkins Coie moved to a different firm. Several associates at firms that signed deals quit and blasted their employers on LinkedIn.
Some lawyers left more quietly. “I’m the primary breadwinner of my family,” said one who left a firm that made a deal with Trump. “I don’t have generational wealth to fall back on. I’m not one of these who can set myself on fire and leave.”
Big Law’s deals cast a chill in the upper echelons of the legal profession, said a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, whose former colleagues fill the ranks of Big Law partnerships.
Privately, some Big Law partners have expressed pride in their own firms for fighting, the former prosecutor said. Others who understand why firms made deals are still unhappy.
“Everybody’s scared, period,” this person said. “Not of each other, but in general. There’s just this culture of fear that I’ve never seen in Big Law.”
Companies’ in-house lawyers are also nervous. They want to make sure their outside counsel is willing to fight the government if necessary. One lawyer working in a company’s general counsel office told Business Insider that her company’s advisors at a law firm that made a deal with Trump said it was necessary to hold onto influence with regulators.
“It just feels very cynical,” said the in-house lawyer, who wants to redirect work to other firms. “I don’t feel comfortable, if you’re going to cave in front of the government, that you’re going to represent me in front of the government.”
Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Brent Griffiths contributed reporting.
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