California Attorney General Rob Bonta isn’t going to pretend the Biglaw deals with Trump are anything but terrible.
In a recent sitdown with Bloomberg News, Bonta took direct aim at the nine Biglaw firms that struck deals with the Trump administration — arrangements that traded Trump-approved pro bono work for relief from executive orders that federal judges have repeatedly found unconstitutional. Or, in some cases, relief from nothing more than the threat of an executive order. Which somehow made the capitulation worse, not better.
This was, in Bonta’s words, cowardice.
“It was weak, it was cowardly, it was craven for Paul Weiss to do it at the beginning and sort of send a signal to the other firms that this is what we’re doing,” Bonta said. “We’re doing deals, we’re caving, we’re bending the knee.”
He wasn’t subtle about the firm he sees as Patient Zero: Paul, Weiss, the first Biglaw shop to decide that fighting an unlawful executive order was just too stressful. Better to offer up pro bono payola, that is free legal services for conservative clients and causes favored by Donald Trump, in exchange for regulatory peace.
And once Paul, Weiss blinked, others followed. Because nothing says “rule of law” like letting the loudest bully in the room set the terms.
Bonta, notably, is not speaking from some abstract, academic perch. California has filed roughly 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration, and the state legislature handed Bonta $25 million last year specifically to keep suing. While Biglaw firms were tripping over themselves to make deals, California was doing what lawyers are theoretically supposed to do when faced with unconstitutional government action: litigate.
“We have the luxury of being able to do the work ourselves, because we’re so well resourced and so large,” Bonta said.
Despite the reputational damage Paul, Weiss has absorbed since the deal became public, the firm doesn’t appear to be losing much sleep over it. The firm recently went through a leadership shakeup, with longtime chair Brad Karp stepping aside earlier this month amid scrutiny over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. His replacement, Scott Barshay, a corporate partner, was reportedly a major internal proponent of the Trump deal.
That tells you a lot about how this decision is being framed internally as a savvy business move designed to protect a client list, not the constitution.
Bonta’s critique lands because it exposes the lie at the heart of Biglaw’s self-image. When the moment came to defend the profession, the constitution, or even their own institutional independence, too many firms chose instead to negotiate with the threat.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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