The Trump administration is on an unbroken losing streak in the courts — 0 for 4 — in its effort to defend President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting large law firms. And things could get worse — for Trump, and for the law firms that capitulated to him.
It has been several months since the first major law firm brokered a deal with Trump to get out from under an executive order penalizing the firm for conducting work or hiring lawyers that the White House disfavors. Eight firms followed that precedent in order to avoid becoming targeted themselves, ultimately committing a combined total of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services to largely unspecified initiatives supported by the Trump administration. Four firms refused to buckle and successfully challenged the orders targeting them in federal district court in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s executive orders and the deals struck by the settling firms have not aged well. The firms that threw in the towel appear to have misjudged the fallout — financial, reputational, political and legal. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has gotten hammered by the judges presiding over the cases challenging the White House, and it’s far from clear the government’s appeal will get a better reception in the higher courts, including the Supreme Court, if it gets there. Furthermore, the deals with the settling firms have so far produced scant results for the Trump administration in concrete terms.
Trump may see the episode as a political win, at least in the short term. He has publicly boasted about the deals for months and repeatedly said that he will put the settling firms to work for the administration. But there is no publicly available evidence that this has actually happened. Privately, representatives for three of the settling firms (who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters) told me that they have not received any instructions or input from the White House on pro bono matters to take on.