1. Home
2. Daily News
3. After 4 BigLaw firms reach deals with Trump,…

Law Firms

After 4 BigLaw firms reach deals with Trump, their future may include coal industry pro bono, DEI caution

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 9, 2025, 10:41 am CDT

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has some work for BigLaw firms that made pro bono pledges to avoid punitive executive orders.

Trump told coal miners at a White House event that he will direct the law firms to help the coal industry with leasing and also said he would use the firms to negotiate tariffs, report Bloomberg Law, Law.com and Law360.

Four firms have reached deals with Trump. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono services to mutually supported pro bono projects. Three others each pledged $100 million in pro bono work. Those firms are Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

The deals called for pro bono work in areas that include assisting veterans and public servants, ensuring fairness in the justice system and fighting antisemitism. Milbank’s deal also mentions its work with an exoneration and resentencing project.

Another pledge made by firms was to commit to merit-based employments practices and to refrain from illegal discrimination and preferences related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Following its deal, Skadden removed future events for its employee affinity groups from its calendar, Bloomberg Law reports in a story based on emails and unnamed sources.

During the event Tuesday, Trump signed four executive orders to help the coal industry, the Washington Post reports. One order directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize coal leasing on public lands.

Others tell the attorney general to block enforcement of state laws that impede coal production, tell the Environmental Protection Agency to delay a federal pollution rule that burdens coal-fired power plants, and direct the Department of Energy to prevent the closing of coal and other power plants in regions with an insufficient supply of electricity.

Law360 recounted Trump’s comments.

“Have you noticed a lot of law firms have been signing up with Trump? A hundred million dollars, another $100 million, for damages that they’ve done,” Trump said.

“But they give you $100 million, and then they announce that, ‘But we have done nothing wrong,’” he said. “And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong, but what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”

“We’ll use some of those people. We’re going to use some of those firms to work with you on your leasing and your other things,” Trump said. “I think they’re going to do a fantastic job.”

Coal miners and executives were among those attending the event.

Trump began issuing executive orders penalizing disfavored firms in February, beginning with a Feb. 25 order targeting Covington & Burling. Three other firms sued in response to the orders. They are Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie.

The executive orders typically called for suspension of lawyers’ security clearances, restricted employee access to government buildings, blocked government hiring of firm employees, and required agencies to take steps to terminate contracts with the firms and their clients—if the firm provided services in connection with the client contract.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. BigLaw attorneys who are ‘frequent practitioners’…

Civil Procedure

BigLaw attorneys who are ‘frequent practitioners’ in federal district can’t be admitted pro hac vice, judge says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 5, 2025, 3:45 pm CST

Two Baker & Hostetler lawyers won’t be able to represent a compounding pharmacy in a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, at least for now, after a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas denied their application to appear pro hac vice.

Partner Andrew M. Grossman and associate Marc N. Wagner cannot be admitted pro hac vice because they are “frequent practitioners” in cases filed in the Northern District of Texas, said U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman of the Northern District of Texas in a March 3 order.

Law360 covered the decision, noting that pro hac vice motions “are common and usually regarded as an afterthought. They are rarely denied.”

A pro hac vice admission means that a lawyer has been admitted to practice in a jurisdiction in only one particular case, Pittman said. In the past year, however, Grossman submitted three such applications, while Wagner submitted four of them in the Northern District of Texas, including the applications in the case before Pittman.

The lawyers, Pittman said, are encouraged “to file applications to be admitted to practice in this court, and [this court] would happily welcome them as members of the bar.”

Grossman is licensed in Washington, D.C., and admitted to practice before nearly every federal appeals court. Wagner is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

Wagner and Grossman did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal email seeking comment. They are among six Baker & Hostetler lawyers who signed the Feb. 24 suit and among four who planned to seek pro hac vice admission in the case.

The suit challenges an FDA decision to remove the weight loss drug semaglutide from a shortage list, which meant that compounding pharmacies were no longer allowed to help satisfy demand. The plaintiffs in the suit are a compounding pharmacy and a trade association that represents compounding facilities.

Pittman appears to be a stickler for the rules. He previously dismissed a suit because of a missed deadline to file a certificate of interested persons and sanctioned two lawyers in a different suit for submitting declarations instead of notarized affidavits as he had directed.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

A mixed martial artist in Florida is heading to prison for murdering his fiancee while he was “super high on Molly” — telling an acquaintance, “I killed her, bro” — after gunning the woman down at their apartment while arguing over the MMA fighter’s drug use.

“I killed her high,” Phillip Keller told the acquaintance during a recorded phone conversation, according to Brevard County prosecutors and the local CBS affiliate WKMG. “I did it. I don’t know how I did it, but I can’t live with myself knowing that,” Keller said. “I’m a piece of s—.”

Keller, who was 39 when the killing unfolded, was sentenced Monday to 50 years behind bars for the 2021 shooting death of Alicia Campitelli, who was a popular piercing artist on Merritt Island known as “Red.” Keller accepted a plea deal during his sentencing hearing to reduce his charge to second-degree murder after originally being charged with first-degree murder in 2021, WKMG reports.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Pro se litigant and lawyer ordered to pay…

Law Firms

Pro se litigant and lawyer ordered to pay $1.5M for using Lewis Brisbois name

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 17, 2024, 3:05 pm CDT

Updated: A federal judge in Houston has ordered a lawyer and a pro se litigant in a rental-fee and eviction dispute to pay $1.5 million for registering a Texas business using the name of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, the law firm representing their litigation opponent in the rental litigation.

U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison of the Southern District of Texas ordered pro se litigant Michael Bitgood to pay $1 million and lawyer Susan C. Norman, who represented a second litigant in the rental dispute, to pay $500,000, Law360 reports. Another lawyer, Bradley B. Beers, was ordered to pay $10,000 for filing an assumed name certificate that registered the new entity with the Texas secretary of state’s office.

Bitgood and Norman filed documents to register a partnership and assume the Lewis Brisbois name after they saw an online notice reflecting that the firm’s registration for a foreign limited liability partnership in Texas had lapsed. After taking on the Lewis Brisbois name, Bitgood and Norman alleged that the Lewis Brisbois lawyer representing their opponent in the rental litigation no longer had the right to appear in a Texas court. The gambit worked.

Lewis Brisbois sued in September 2022 for alleged trademark infringement, unfair competition and fraud. Ellison issued a preliminary injunction in February 2023 that was upheld in an unpublished July 31 opinion by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans.

Ellison granted a motion for summary judgment Aug. 14, a permanent injunction Sept. 6 and assessed damages Sept. 13.

Ellison’s summary judgment opinion found for Lewis Brisbois on the trademark infringement and unfair competition claims. He also said Lewis Brisbois was entitled to attorney fees, which are allowed in Lanham Act trademark cases that are “exceptional.”

“If any Lanham Act case is exceptional, it is this one,” Ellison wrote. “Defendants have filed dozens of frivolous motions and delayed the proceedings for months.”

In a footnote, Ellison said the filing of frivolous motions was “most egregious” in Bitgood’s case because he had filed 65 motions and documents after being granted access to the PACER filing system.

“This court has had complex, multiyear class actions require far fewer filings than this straightforward infringement case,” Ellison wrote.

Norman and Beers did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s email and voicemail messages seeking comment.

Bitgood told the Journal in an email that, “No, I do not have $1 million laying around” to pay the judgment. He elaborated in a phone interview.

“Not only is it unfair, it’s outrageous,” Bitgood says of the damages order. Lewis Brisbois “didn’t suffer a penny’s worth of damages; they incurred no attorneys fees,” he says.

Bitgood says he sought to use the Lewis Brisbois name “for the heck of it,” but his quest turned out to be successful because he “whipped” Lewis Brisbois when he disqualified the firm in the rental dispute.

“I beat them fair and square in state court,” he says.

Bitgood says he told Ellison in an Oct. 6, 2022, hearing, which was less than a month into the trademark lawsuit, that he had no interest in fighting the trademark case and didn’t want to use the Lewis Brisbois name.

“Who wants a name like that with their reputation anyway?” Bitgood says.

Additional demands, however, for a reversal of the rental decision and indemnity led Bitgood, in his words, to tell Lewis Brisbois to, “Blow it out your a- -; there is no way I’m going to do all that.”

As for Ellison’s allegations that Bitgood filed frivolous motions, Bitgood says the judge should specify which motions he thought were frivolous and what law supported his conclusion. And he should have a hearing to refute the allegations, Bitgood says.

Because he indicated early on that he was willing to give up the name, Bitgood says, “What are we fighting about?”

Updated Sept. 17 at 3:37 p.m. to add comments from pro se litigant Michael Bitgood.

When it comes to access to justice, it has long been estimated that low-income Americans did not receive any or enough legal help for over 90% of their civil legal problems, according to a 2022 report from the Legal Services Corp.

Maybe they can’t afford a lawyer. Or they don’t think that they need one. Or they don’t understand enough about their problems and potential consequences. Either way, there’s a vast portion of the population that is not being served by the lawyers out there.

A commonly cited solution to helping bridge this access-to-justice canyon is for lawyers to provide more pro bono work. While it won’t come close to helping all the people in need, it’s a good first step. In that regard, have generative artificial intelligence tools made it easier for lawyers to provide pro bono services?

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Kristen Sonday and Laura Safdie talk with the ABA Journal’s Victor Li about how generative AI is changing the face of pro bono services for lawyers and the clients they serve.

Sonday, a 2017 ABA Journal Legal Rebel, is a co-founder and the chief operating officer of Paladin, legal technology platform for pro bono programs, and Safdie, also a 2017 Legal Rebel, is a co-founder of legal research service Casetext and is currently Vice President of Artificial Intelligence & Global Affairs at Thomson Reuters.