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Law Firms

Did 9 firms making deals with Trump violate bribery, anti-fraud laws? Democratic letters seek answers

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 24, 2025, 2:26 pm CDT

Sixteen Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to nine law firms that ask them to disavow deals with President Donald Trump and to answer questions about their legality.

Among the 16 Democrats are two lawmakers leading the effort: U.S. Rep. Dave Min of California and U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, who are both lawyers, according to an April 24 press release and ABC News.

HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery posted a link to the documents on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The nine firms getting the letters are Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Latham & Watkins; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

Firms making the deals pledged to devote millions of dollars in pro bono hours to issues supported by the firms and Trump. Their agreements allowed them to avoid executive orders that, among other things, call for the suspension of lawyers’ security clearances and imperil their clients’ government contracts.

According to the letters, continued performance under the agreements may be unenforceable under contracts law, would have negative effects on the legal system, could expose the firms to civil and criminal liability, and creates potential ethics violations with respect to conflicts of interest and limits on future law practice.

Agreements of this kind “signal acquiescence to an abuse of federal power, raising serious questions about how or whether your firm would represent clients or take on matters that might be seen as antagonistic to President Trump or his agenda,” the letters said.

The letters asked firms to explain whether the deals open themselves up to liability for:

  • Violating federal bribery laws by offering something of value to influence official acts.

  • Aiding and abetting violations of the Hobbs Act, which makes it a crime to affect commerce by extortion.

  • Violating federal anti-fraud laws that prohibit schemes to defraud the public of the honest services of public officials.

  • Violating the federal law that prohibits participation in a racketeering enterprise.

  • Violating state statutes that ban providing public servants with benefits to influence actions.

The April 24 letters follow inquiries sent to firms from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who are both Democrats, according to Reuters and an April 22 press release.

The first batch of letters by Blumenthal and Raskin sought more information on attempts made to poach lawyers and clients from one of the targeted firms and asked six firms to retain records pertaining to the executive orders. A second group of letters asked five firms for more information while asserting that their “capitulation” allowed Trump to suppress their speech.

“Your agreement makes you complicit in efforts to undermine the rule of law and to turn private attorneys into President Trump’s personal law firm, ready to do whatever he decides,” Blumenthal and Raskin wrote.

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Immigration Law

Iowa immigration law making illegal reentry a misdemeanor blocked by 8th Circuit

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 29, 2025, 9:35 am CST

Iowa can’t enforce a law making it a crime for immigrants to be in the state if they reentered the country illegally after formerly being denied entry or ordered deported, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis affirmed a preliminary injunction preventing the law from taking effect in a Jan. 24 opinion.

The law makes violations an aggravated misdemeanor and requires judges to order convicted immigrants to return to the foreign nation from which they entered or attempted to enter the United States.

U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher of the Southern District of Iowa had agreed with the Biden administration that the law is likely preempted by federal law.

In an opinion by Judge Duane Benton, the 8th Circuit affirmed.

The Iowa law is “an obstacle to the exercise of the discretion that Congress gives to federal officials charged with enforcing federal immigration law,” the 8th Circuit said. “Decisions about the removal of illegal aliens ‘touch on foreign relations and must be made with one voice,’” wrote Benton, quoting a former U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Benton is an appointee of former President George W. Bush. Other panel members are Judge Jonathan A. Kobes, an appointee of President Donald Trump during his first term, and Senior Judge Morris S. Arnold, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

The decision “may not be the final word,” the New York Times reports. “The panel’s preliminary ruling could be appealed, and the case has yet to go to trial on its merits at the district court. The U.S. Supreme Court could ultimately consider the question of whether states can enforce their own immigration laws, in a challenge to either the Iowa law or to similar measures passed in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.”

Publications covering the order, besides the New York Times, include Courthouse News Service, Law360, the Iowa Capital Dispatch and the Des Moines Register.

The American Immigration Council and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented an immigration legal services group also challenging the law, issued joint press releases (here and here).

The case is United States v. Iowa.

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The legal job market is robust. And within all those professional journeys there are two types of searchers: those lawyers seeking a job change and those seeking a career change. If you’re in the market, it’s important not to conflate these two paths.

Therefore, before you kick off a professional search, start by answering one critical question: Am I looking to be somewhere different or am I looking to be something different?

To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a simple job change. Moving from Firm A to Firm B, for example, can be just enough “different” to invigorate and motivate your next chapter. That journey certainly requires advance planning, opportunity creation and disciplined decision-making. But to assess, map and execute a career pivot requires a distinct approach.

When we ruminate on potential career changes, it’s easy to over index on those instances where lawyers have famously transitioned out of the law. Could we be the next great chef or bestselling novelist? Why not just take the leap and do it, right? But then the alarm clock sounds, the dream ends, and we realize that our passion may not pay the bills. And contrary to what our Generation Z friends may say, dropping everything and just “living your best life,” while both aspirational and inspirational, isn’t really a plan.

Here’s a truth that may not be dream worthy, but it is both realistic and achievable: Lawyers can re-invent themselves by making strategic moves within the law. If you think of your career pivot as an evolution rather than a revolution, the path becomes more clear.

While there are many ways to evolve a legal career, one of the best steps to a diversified portfolio of experience and opportunity is the in-house legal market. The in-house career path has changed over the course of the last two decades. Where law firms operate under a model of specialists and sub-specialists, most in-house teams have moved to a model that prioritizes generalists. And lawyers with multi-disciplinary experience increase opportunities that are either adjacent to or completely outside of law.

Today, corporate legal departments must cover an expanding list of matters with increased cost-control pressures. “Do more with less” is a common theme. The function needs to be managed with optimal efficiency. This requires a lean team of multifaceted legal advisers, as opposed to a large group of subject matter experts. Therefore, most corporate legal departments will excitedly invest in developing generalists, understanding that law firms are not incentivized to do the same. Once there, the door opens to a world of different opportunities.

In some instances, the progression may start by simply adding adjacent experiences to an in-house role. For example, it is now common to see in-house lawyers having cross-functional responsibility within human resources, compliance, contracts, communications, investor relations, government affairs or other corporate departments. Similarly, being a dedicated in-house legal adviser to a division or brand within a larger enterprise can create opportunities to add operational experience within that business or brand.

There are growing examples of CEOs, presidents, founders and entrepreneurs who started their career as in-house counsel. Those lawyers (or former lawyers) typically became ingrained in a business, knew every corner of its operations, understood the risk profile and learned the art of becoming a broader business leader rather than just a legal technician.

These transitions, however, do not happen abruptly or without intention. To evolve from legal to business requires a strategic approach. Here are some steps that will help make it happen.

1. Be a hand raiser

Whether you are applying for your first in-house role or you’re already there, make it known that an important goal of the job is to expand your portfolio beyond a specific legal specialty. For example, while a law firm wouldn’t let an IP lawyer tackle an employment matter, that type of opportunity absolutely exists in-house. Corporate legal departments are always underresourced, and over reliance on outside counsel can be a budget killer. So raise a hand and ask if you can manage or simply participate in an issue outside of your lane. This will help reduce outside costs and allow you to gain a new skill. Expanding your experience base will be rewarded and you’ll quickly start seeing your overall business portfolio evolve.

2. Contribute in a nonlegal capacity

There are always opportunities within a corporation for lawyers to contribute outside of the legal function. A few examples: (a) most companies have various cross-functional committees (ethics, compliance, personnel, culture, diversity, etc.) that may be managed outside of legal, but where the skills of counsel are useful; (b) in the context of acquisitions, companies frequently seek internal resources to manage diligence, integration or other special merger-related projects and there is rarely a dedicated resource for that; or (c) in a public company, become a member of the disclosure team that reviews quarterly and annual public filings for accuracy and thoroughness. These opportunities, and others, while either adjacent to or outside of legal, will expand your technical reach, allow you to learn different areas of business, expose you to different functions and give you access to leaders that you may not otherwise interact with.

3. Client skills and marketing

Yes, you still have to conduct client development efforts when you’re in-house. The key here is to market yourself beyond legal. Create relationships with clients that are broader than any specific area or matter. Develop a reputation as a trusted business adviser, not just a technical legal adviser. Find out your clients’ most pressing challenges, request to experience their operations firsthand, and meet their staff at all levels. Get ingrained in their business. From there you will find opportunities to market your capabilities in a more curated and impactful way. For example, you can create training modules that address a specific business need, rather than just the annual corporate training modules that lawyers can get such a bad reputation for deploying. Or approach business and strategy meetings differently by speaking out on both legal and nonlegal issues. There are many opportunities to reframe and expand your value by demonstrating that you’re not merely a legal technician but rather a business leader.

4. Play smart politics

Politics is a part of any career, whether you like it or not. But are you courting the right constituents? If you are looking to expand beyond legal, then don’t insulate yourself within the legal community. Get out and make connections and form relationships across the entire enterprise. Find opportunities to get in front of varied stakeholders, leaders, functions and, if possible, even the board of directors. They can and will become valued connections that can open up new and interesting paths for you.

In sum, serving as in-house counsel at any level will create a world of divergent opportunities. You will find paths you didn’t even know existed. If you are intentional in how you start and mange an in-house legal career, you can create a series of strategic moves that will result in the type of pivot that leads you either beyond or completely outside of the law. Go start your evolution!

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Scott Chaplin worked as a public company chief legal officer for more than two decades in a variety of industries, including technology, life sciences, defense and national security, consumer products, retail and manufacturing. He also worked as a chief human resources officer, board member and arbitrator/mediator.

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ABAJournal.com is accepting queries for original, thoughtful, nonpromotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors to run in the Your Voice section. Details and submission guidelines are posted at “Your Submissions, Your Voice.”

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This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.

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Law Professors

Is SCOTUS making it harder to teach constitutional law? Profs ‘depleted’ and taken aback by ‘velocity’ of change

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 27, 2024, 3:10 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court’s “hard-right supermajority” is using the doctrine of originalism to overturn established precedent, making it difficult for constitutional law professors grappling with rapid change that they think is unprincipled, according to an article in the New York Times.

The New York Times spoke with several constitutional law professors, including professor Rebecca Brown of the University of Southern California.

“While I was working on my syllabus for this course, I literally burst into tears,” she told the New York Times author. “I couldn’t figure out how any of this makes sense. Why do we respect it? Why do we do any of it? I’m feeling very depleted by having to teach it.”

“What feels different at this moment,” said Barry Friedman, a professor at the New York University School of Law, “is the ambition and the velocity, how fast and aggressively it’s happening.”

As an example, the New York Times pointed to the June 2022 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which found a Second Amendment right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

According to the New York Times writer, the decision “featured the right-wing justices playing amateur historians, cherry-picking and distorting evidence from decades or centuries ago in order to justify their existing opinions.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of University of California at Berkeley School of Law and an ABA Journal contributor, addressed the same topic in a March 2022 podcast. One of the guests was Jeffrey Abramson, a professor at the University of Texas who was teaching law students and undergraduates.

“I think we’re on the cusp of a disaster. I think we’re seeing almost a virtual collapse of the ability to teach con law as law,” Abramson said.

“I started this semester with Marbury v. Madison, as almost all of us do,” Abramson said. “I traditionally played devil’s advocate with judicial review. I didn’t have to. Before I had gotten 20 sentences out of my mouth, the students were already asking whether judicial review, both historically and today, serves any democratic purpose.”

Abramson also has students read a Franz Kafka story about a man from the country who finds a gatekeeper who won’t allow him to gain entry into the law.

“It’s a long story about whether there is a law inside that the doorkeeper is keeping students from getting into, or whether there is nothing in there, that it’s all a charade, it’s all a magic trick. They’re only doorkeepers and doorkeepers and doorkeepers.”

In the past, students believed in the law and thought that there was a difference between the law and its agents, who could be faithful or corrupt, Abramson said. But now, his students “share this vast cynicism” that there are only gatekeepers, and “there is no such thing as the law.”

Will Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, offers a different perspective at the Volokh Conspiracy, where he cited his presentation at a symposium that he has posted to SSRN.

There is a perception that teaching constitutional law is more difficult because the Supreme Court has been doing so many things so quickly. But the perception is wrong, Baude said.

The Supreme Court “has long been engaging in awe-inspiring power grabs,” he said, citing cases with liberal results on abortion, same-sex marriage, desegregation and the rights of criminal defendants.

“The court has always been making questionable calls in high-profile cases, likely for a mix of political reasons and genuine differences of opinion about the nature of the Constitution,” Baude wrote. “What has really changed is not that the court is newly imperial or newly lawless or newly political. What has changed is that many more folks inside the Ivory Tower have noticed and no longer see their values and ways of thinking represented as often by the court.”

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Associates

BigLaw associates ‘have never had it better;’ they are working fewer hours, survey says, and making more money

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 1, 2024, 12:56 pm CST

Lawyer head count is growing, while productivity is declining, according to a year-end survey of more than 130 larger law firms released this week by Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group.

The survey showed that the number of lawyers is up 2.8% for 2023, while productivity is down 2.1% for 2023, which amounts to 1,542 billable hours per lawyer for the year, according to a survey summary provided by Wells Fargo.

A Big Law Business column from Bloomberg Law emphasized the findings.

“Associates have never had it better than they do right now,” wrote Big Law Business columnist Roy Strom. “BigLaw associates have never logged fewer hours and never brought home bigger paychecks. Who doesn’t like working less and getting paid more?”

Many BigLaw firms increased associate pay in late 2023. Paychecks typically range from $225,000 for the class of 2023 to $435,000 for the most senior associates—and that doesn’t include bonuses.

The Wells Fargo survey gathered information from more than 130 firms, including 70 Am Law 100 firms (representing the nation’s top 100 grossing firms) and 35 Second Hundred firms (ranked 101 to 200 by revenue). The remainder were regional firms.

Strom looked at information provided by firms in the Am Law 100.

“Lawyers at those top firms billed an average of 1,551 hours last year,” Strom wrote. “That’s down from an all-time peak in 2021 of 1,683 hours, Wells Fargo data show. It might not sound like much. It works out to about 2.5 hours of extra time per week. Hit the Peloton, go see a movie, give yourself a little treat.”

Owen Burman, managing director of Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group, told Strom that the decline in productivity didn’t lead to a large number of layoffs because of increased billing rates.

Burman told Law360 that the outlook for firms in 2024 is “pretty positive” at this point. He cited increases in billing rates and demand and noted that firms have a lot of work in progress.

Other publications covering the survey include Law.com, Reuters and another Bloomberg Law story.

Wells Fargo also found, regarding all the firms surveyed, that:

  • Standard billing rates increased 8.3% in 2023.

  • Revenues increased 6% in 2023, double the 2022 growth rate of 3%.

  • Net income increased 5.9% in 2023, compared to a 3.1% decrease in 2022.

  • Profits per equity partner increased by 4.9% in 2023.

  • Expense growth eased to 6% in 2023, down from double digit growth posted in the first nine months of 2022.

Lawyers who expect generative artificial intelligence to significantly impact the practice of law see some of the greatest potential in legal research and writing.

In August, a LexisNexis Legal & Professional study of nearly 8,000 lawyers, law students and consumers in the United States and three other countries found 65% of these professionals believe generative AI tools could assist them in researching matters. Meanwhile, 56% believe the tools could help them draft documents.

Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of online legal research software company Fastcase, is thrilled by the prospect of making legal research more efficient. Traditionally, researchers would have to come up with keywords and add them to mathematical strings of language that they plug into a search engine. They would then receive a long list of documents and often spend hours reviewing each result to see if it yields their answer.

“This way of doing research is clumsy and slow and often leads to wrong answers,” says Walters, who also became the chief strategy officer of vLex after the legal technology company merged with Fastcase in April.

But now Walters says lawyers could ask AI tools to pull together relevant documents, read them and instantaneously synthesize results for them. In October, his company released a new version of Vincent AI, a legal research assistant that, among other features, allows lawyers to get answers to legal questions with citations and links from verified sources.

He expects that with the advent of GPT-4 and other large language models that interact with vast quantities of text, more of these tools with similar and even expanded capabilities are just on the horizon.

“This generation of tools doesn’t really solve research tasks, but I think they point to a new generation of tools right after this that will, instead of creating statistically likely answers, understand there’s a question being asked and synthesize text to answer the question,” Walters says.

June Hsiao Liebert, the president of the American Association of Law Libraries, agrees that large language models show a lot of promise for improving legal research and writing. She says they are already useful for some steps involved in these tasks, including drafting and editing documents.

“Given how they work, tools utilizing [large language models] can be useful in modeling what the ‘average’ or ‘typical’ solution or document might look like for a particular question, since it essentially predicts words based on what it has been trained on,” says Liebert, the director of information services at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. “It can also give users different answers depending on the point of view, set of facts or purpose. This ability to model different options can be extremely helpful and time-saving.”

Liebert encourages lawyers who use generative AI to double-check their work but says legal tech companies are making progress in addressing problems with accuracy in available tools.

She anticipates they will continue to investigate and devise solutions for other issues, including authenticity and bias.

“As these tools improve and we become better at using them, [large language models] and other AIs of the future will become just another tool that is available to everyone in the legal industry, not unlike the spell-check tool or even calculators,” Liebert says.

Legal Rebels Class of 2024

Locked in: Criminal justice startups tap into generative AI’s early promise

Bridging the Gap: Lawyers trying to increase access to justice see promise in generative AI

Helping Hand: Generative AI already is making an impact on legal research and writing

Always on: Will generative AI alleviate burnout or make lawyers more miserable?

Head of the Class: Law schools consider post-ChatGPT coursework

e-Sign on the Dotted Line: When it comes to using generative AI and contracts, the devil is in the details

Age of e-Discovery: Generative AI could revolutionize e-discovery—but buyer beware

Rewiring Entry: How AI could blur the borders of immigration law

This story was originally published in the February-March 2024 issue of the ABA Journal.

In This Podcast:

Lawyers who expect generative artificial intelligence to significantly impact the practice of law see some of the greatest potential in legal research and writing.

In August, a LexisNexis Legal & Professional study of nearly 8,000 lawyers, law students and consumers in the United States and three other countries found 65% of these professionals believe generative AI tools could assist them in researching matters. Meanwhile, 56% believe the tools could help them draft documents.

Ed Walters, CEO and co-founder of online legal research software company Fastcase, is thrilled by the prospect of making legal research more efficient. Traditionally, researchers would have to come up with keywords and add them to mathematical strings of language that they plug into a search engine. They would then receive a long list of documents and often spend hours reviewing each result to see if it yields their answer.

“This way of doing research is clumsy and slow and often leads to wrong answers,” says Walters, who also became the chief strategy officer of vLex after the legal technology company merged with Fastcase in April.

But now Walters says lawyers could ask AI tools to pull together relevant documents, read them and instantaneously synthesize results for them. In October, his company released a new version of Vincent AI, a legal research assistant that, among other features, allows lawyers to get answers to legal questions with citations and links from verified sources.

He expects that with the advent of GPT-4 and other large language models that interact with vast quantities of text, more of these tools with similar and even expanded capabilities are just on the horizon.

“This generation of tools doesn’t really solve research tasks, but I think they point to a new generation of tools right after this that will, instead of creating statistically likely answers, understand there’s a question being asked and synthesize text to answer the question,” Walters says.

June Hsiao Liebert, the president of the American Association of Law Libraries, agrees that large language models show a lot of promise for improving legal research and writing. She says they are already useful for some steps involved in these tasks, including drafting and editing documents.

“Given how they work, tools utilizing [large language models] can be useful in modeling what the ‘average’ or ‘typical’ solution or document might look like for a particular question, since it essentially predicts words based on what it has been trained on,” says Liebert, the director of information services at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. “It can also give users different answers depending on the point of view, set of facts or purpose. This ability to model different options can be extremely helpful and time-saving.”

Liebert encourages lawyers who use generative AI to double-check their work but says legal tech companies are making progress in addressing problems with accuracy in available tools.

She anticipates they will continue to investigate and devise solutions for other issues, including authenticity and bias.

“As these tools improve and we become better at using them, [large language models] and other AIs of the future will become just another tool that is available to everyone in the legal industry, not unlike the spell-check tool or even calculators,” Liebert says.

Legal Rebels Class of 2024

Locked in: Criminal justice startups tap into generative AI’s early promise

Bridging the Gap: Lawyers trying to increase access to justice see promise in generative AI

Helping Hand: Generative AI already is making an impact on legal research and writing

Always on: Will generative AI alleviate burnout or make lawyers more miserable?

Head of the Class: Law schools consider post-ChatGPT coursework

e-Sign on the Dotted Line: When it comes to using generative AI and contracts, the devil is in the details

Age of e-Discovery: Generative AI could revolutionize e-discovery—but buyer beware

Rewiring Entry: How AI could blur the borders of immigration law

This story was originally published in the February-March 2024 issue of the ABA Journal.

In This Podcast: