1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Did 9 firms making deals with Trump violate…

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.

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

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. ‘It’s Time for You to Leave’: More immigration…

Immigration Law

‘It’s Time for You to Leave’: More immigration lawyers get notices to self-deport

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 25, 2025, 9:32 am CDT

Immigration lawyers outside Massachusetts are also receiving notices to self-deport, despite their U.S. citizenship.

Among the lawyers receiving notices are Austin, Texas, lawyer Hubert Montoya and Salt Lake City lawyer Carlos Trujillo, according to Fortune, KTVX and the Utah News Dispatch.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the notices said.

Immigration lawyers in Ohio, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania have also reported receiving the notices, according to the Utah News Dispatch.

Montoya told Fortune that he laughed when he received the notice.

“I just thought it was absurd,” he said.

Trujillo told the Utah News Dispatch that he has advocated for the immigrant community, but he refuses to think that it is the reason for the notice.

“It probably was a mistake, and I love this country so much that I think my first inclination is just to believe that and leave it at that,” he said.

The notices are part of a what appears to be a mass email campaign telling immigrants that the immigration parole allowing them to temporarily live in the United States has been revoked, according to the Utah News Dispatch.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is canceling paroles that allowed people who entered the United States using an online appointment app to remain in the country for two years, according to previous reporting by the Associated Press. The Trump administration has suspended use of the app.

The Department of Homeland Security sent notices to email addresses provided by the immigrants, including, in some cases, email addresses of U.S. citizens they listed as contacts, according to a statement by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Some of the notices may have been sent to lawyers and other unintended recipients, the agency told Fortune.

The notices being sent are not limited to people who used the appointment app, according to a Customs and Border Protection statement cited by the Utah News Dispatch.

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

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Skadden improperly limited lawyer access…

Law Firms

Skadden improperly limited lawyer access to email distribution lists, group claims in NLRB filing

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 28, 2025, 1:19 pm CDT

A workers’ rights group alleges that Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom improperly interfered with protected employee discussions about the law firm’s deal with President Donald Trump when it restricted email distribution lists.

The National Institute for Workers’ Rights filed an unfair labor practice charge with those allegations last week with the National Labor Relations Board, report Bloomberg Law, Law360 and Reuters.

Skadden’s deal, announced March 28 on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, calls for the firm to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to support causes favored by Trump and the firm. The agreement also said Skadden will not engage in illegal discrimination based on equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Skadden reached the deal to prevent becoming a target in a punitive executive order.

The charge said “associates used firm email to discuss these changes, submit resignations, plan coordinated rejections of recruitment activities, and express concerns about the impact on what they do, with whom they work, and their ethical obligations.”

A letter sent to the NLRB, along with the labor charge, cited an anonymous Skadden employee who said the firm “turned off firm email lists to silence people” before announcement of the deal.

Curtailing access to email lists interfered with employees’ ability to engage in mutual aid and protection outside of a union, the letter said.

The National Institute for Workers’ Rights submitted the charge because of its concerns about worker rights and was not acting on behalf of Skadden employees, according to the letter. Generally, the National Labor Relations Act allows anyone to file a charge for unfair labor practices, according to Bloomberg Law.

Jeremy D. London, a Skadden executive partner, did not immediately reply to the ABA Journal’s request for comment.

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

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Insurance case is ‘but a speck in the recesses…

Judiciary

Insurance case is ‘but a speck in the recesses of interstellar space,’ high-profile appeals judge writes

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 28, 2025, 3:07 pm CDT

In a span of less than a week, a conservative federal appeals judge has written two opinions that are getting attention—for taking a tough stand against the mistaken deportation of an immigrant in one case and for waxing philosophical in another case.

In an April 17 opinion, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III took the Trump administration to task for “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”

Wilkinson wrote the “blistering” opinion for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia, in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia of Maryland, according to the New York Times.

Abrego Garcia was deported to a prison in El Salvador in Central America because of an “administrative error.” The case is Abrego Garcia v. Noem.

Now, Wilkinson is getting attention once again for an April 23 opinion in an insurance dispute involving a man on a lawn mower struck and killed by an underinsured motorist, according to Above the Law and the Judicial Notice newsletter at Original Jurisdiction.

The 4th Circuit held that the man’s estate was entitled to $150,000 under the plain terms of the man’s underinsured motorist coverage—and nothing more.

Wilkinson engaged in “existential, metaphysical musings” at the end of his opinion, according to Judicial Notice.

Here is what Wilkinson wrote: “What after all does it matter? A single, seemingly ordinary, rather technical insurance case. One among the many hundreds of rulings judges make each year.

“What does it matter? A case but a speck in the recesses of interstellar space and in the four-plus billion years since our solar system’s birth. What does it matter, this case deserted by both space and time?

“To be human is to live in the here and now. This small case extracts courageous meaning from the vast impersonality in which it resides. Its immediacy confounds infinity; its passions light the dark. We have given it our best; the litigants have given it their best. The trial court has done the same. We do not overlook for a moment the tragic passing of the insured but neither can we ignore the contract under South Carolina law that defines the insurer’s obligation.”

The insurance case is Owners Insurance Co. v. Walsh.

Wilkinson, 80, was appointed to the 4th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan, the New York Times reports in a story about his background. He is the “son of a patrician Virginia banker,” an Army veteran and a law grad of the University of Virginia.

He delayed his legal education after one year to unsuccessfully run for Congress in 1970 as a Republican. After law school, he worked as a law professor and in the U.S. Department of Justice.

On the bench, the New York Times reports, Wilkinson has “a long track record of conservative rulings under his belt, having criticized rulings establishing abortion rights while writing approvingly of a broad conception of presidential power.”

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

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Harvard Law Review investigated for alleged…

Law Schools

Harvard Law Review investigated for alleged ‘spoils system’ that uses race in article selection

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 29, 2025, 12:13 pm CDT

The federal government has opened an investigation into the Harvard Law Review “based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal,” according to an April 28 press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At issue is whether the law review’s policies for membership and article selection violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, color and national origin in education programs receiving federal funding.

Allocating opportunities and recognition based on race, rather than merit, is unacceptable, the press release said.

Reuters, Bloomberg Law, ABC News and the Harvard Crimson have coverage.

The civil rights offices of the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services are conducting investigation.

“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” said Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in the press release.

The investigation follows a report by the Washington Free Beacon concluding that race “plays a far larger role in the selection of both editors and articles” than previously acknowledged by the Harvard Law Review. The Washington Free Beacon article was based on leaked internal documents.

The press release cited alleged statements by editors at the Harvard Law Review in which they appeared to favor minority writers. In one instance, an editor allegedly voiced concern that four of the five people who wanted to reply to an article about police reform “are white men.” In another alleged incident, an editor suggested that an article should get expedited review because the author was a minority.

The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization that is legally independent from the Harvard Law School, according to a statement by a Harvard Law School spokesperson cited by publications covering the investigation.

The school is “committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations,” the statement said.

The investigation was launched amid the federal government’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard University, which has sued in response.

See also:

Lawsuits target law reviews at Harvard and NYU, saying they favor women and minorities

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

“May you live in interesting times.” For immigration lawyers, that old proverb is now a reality. Ever since the start of the second Trump administration, immigration lawyers have been busier than ever.

Whether it is dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, deportations, executive orders slowing down the visa process, limiting birthright citizenship, rescinding Obama- and Biden-era immigration policies, or nervous clients worried about what the new regime might mean for them, immigration lawyers have plenty on their plates.

Technology, particularly generative artificial intelligence, can help with some of that increased workload.

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer and a tech enthusiast, talks to the ABA Journal’s Victor Li. They talk about how tech can help immigration lawyers work more efficiently, as well as just how much has changed in the immigration landscape since January.

Siskind is a founding partner at the law firm Siskind Susser and a co-founder of Visalaw.ai, a tech company that creates AI-powered software for immigration lawyers. He is also a 2024 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.

See also:

How technology can improve immigration policy and practice

Want to listen on the go? Legal Rebels is available on several podcast listening services. Subscribe and never miss an episode.
Apple | Spotify | Google Play

In This Podcast:

Greg Siskind

Greg Siskind is a founder of Siskind Susser, a national immigration law firm based in Memphis, Tennessee. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s board of governors and vice chair of the International Bar Association’s Immigration and Nationality Law Committee. He has written seven books on immigration law topics. He is also a co-founder of Visalaw.ai, a tech company that creates AI-powered software for immigration lawyers. Siskind is a 2024 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.