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Law Firms

‘There is no question that we will fight,’ says latest law firm targeted in Trump executive order

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 10, 2025, 10:26 am CDT

The latest law firm targeted by the Trump administration, Susman Godfrey, won’t be the last, President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

Trump said the administration had signed deals with many targeted firms, and, “We have another five to go,” Bloomberg Law reports.

Other publications with coverage include Law.com and Reuters.

Susman plans to fight the executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday. It is the sixth firm targeted by Trump in punitive orders because of their representation of clients and causes adverse to Trump.

One of the targeted firms—Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison—is no longer subject to an order because of a deal that it reached with Trump that included an agreement to provide $40 million in pro bono services to mutually supported pro bono projects.

Three other firms also reached deals with Trump to avoid future executive orders targeting them.

Susman vowed to fight in a statement published on its website.

“Anyone who knows Susman Godfrey knows we believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it,” the statement said. “This principle guides us now. There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order.”

The Susman order seeks the suspension of security clearances issued to any of the firm’s lawyers; restricts access to government buildings for firm employees; bans the government from providing resources to Susman, including compartmentalized information facilities; bans government hiring of Susman employees; and calls for termination of government contracts for which Susman has been hired to provide services, including contracts retained by its clients.

Susman was one of the firms that filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News for false claims that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were used to help former President Joe Biden win the 2020 election. The case settled for $787.5 million.

The executive order alleged that Susman “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections.”

According to Bloomberg Law, “Susman is home to some of the country’s top trial lawyers and is well-known for taking major contingency fee cases.” It has profits of nearly $7 million per partner in fiscal year 2023.

Executive orders that targeted Paul Weiss and three other firms included provisions similar to the Susman executive order. A memo targeting Covington & Burling was more limited.

In addition to Paul Weiss, the firms that reached deals with Trump are Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Each of those three firms agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services to mutually agreeable pro bono projects.

Firms that sued over the executive orders are Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie. They have all obtained temporary restraining orders blocking many sections of the executive orders.

See also:

Which firms, legal groups, law profs signed briefs supporting Perkins Coie in challenge to punitive Trump order?

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First Amendment

Law prof suspended over exam question, class discussion can sue for First Amendment retaliation, 7th Circuit says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 13, 2025, 2:14 pm CDT

A federal appeals court has revived a First Amendment retaliation claim by a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law who used an “expurgated racial slur” on an exam question, leading to an investigation, required diversity training, a suspension and denial of a pay raise.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Chicago ruled Wednesday in a lawsuit by professor Jason Kilborn, whose 2022 suit was dismissed in December 2023.

His federal suit had alleged retaliation for constitutionally protected speech, due process violations of the 14th Amendment and state law violations.

A university professor’s academic speech is entitled to qualified First Amendment protection under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the 7th Circuit ruled Wednesday in an opinion by Judge Thomas Lee Kirsch II, an appointee of President Donald Trump during his first term.

“We conclude that Kilborn has plausibly alleged that his speech is constitutionally protected and reverse the dismissal of his claim,” the appeals court said.

Because the appeals court revived the retaliation claim, it also vacated a federal judge’s refusal to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims and ordered further consideration.

The university had found that Kilborn violated the harassment section of its nondiscrimination police after an investigation that followed the controversial exam question.

The December 2020 final exam in civil procedure included a hypothetical in which a plaintiff alleged that her managers had called her a “n- – – – -” and a “b- – – -.” Kilborn’s exam included only the first letter of the word followed by underlined blanks. Some students were upset by the question.

The university then investigated allegations that Kilborn created a racially hostile environment for minorities in a class that he taught two semesters earlier by commenting on “cockroaches” and a “public lynching.”

The cockroach comment was part of a discussion on why defendants sometimes settle frivolous cases. The media only covers frivolous cases when the defendant loses, not when the defendant wins, he said. Kilborn said defendants fear that the public will learn about losses in frivolous cases, and “then all the cockroaches come out of the walls, they’re thinking, right?”

In the same discussion, Kilborn said, “I’m not subjecting my corporate bottom line to that public lynching; I’m sorry, that’s not the right word to use.”

In a different discussion on race-based traffic stops, the appeals court said, “Kilborn used an African American Vernacular English (AAVE) accent while repeating the lyrics of a Jay-Z song, which describes the pretextual stop of a young Black man (‘You was doin’ 55 in a 54.’).”

In response, the university refused to give Kilborn an across-the-board 2% merit raise and said he could not return the classroom until he completed an eight-week diversity training program.

Kilborn’s exam question, as well as other remarks investigated by the university, “address matters of public concern, notwithstanding the limited size of Kilborn’s audience,” the 7th Circuit said.

“The exam question was designed to give students experience confronting a highly charged situation that they may encounter in real-life practice and to be a continuation of the learning that occurred in the classroom,” Kirsch wrote. “The content, form and context of the exam question give no indication that it involved a matter of private concern, rather than serving broader pedagogical purposes. Kilborn’s in-class statements performed a similar function. They were designed to engage students and stimulate in-class discussion on topics of significant interest to the broader community, including frivolous litigation and pretextual police stops.”

Hat tip to Law360, which covered the decision.

See also:

UIC law prof must receive online diversity training, coaching before classroom return, letter says

Exam question wasn’t only offensive behavior of UIC law professor, according to internal investigation

Court dismisses part of UIC law prof’s civil rights lawsuit

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

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to take away funding from a children’s hospital if it fails to follow his executive order requiring medical care facilities to ask patients about their immigration status on intake forms.

Abbott made the post on X in response to a doctor’s viral video on TikTok telling patients they were under no obligation to answer the citizenship question.

“Hey Texas Children’s Hospital & Baylor College of Medicine this doctor is putting your Medicaid & Medicare funding at risk. [You] better think twice & have crystal clear records. There will be consequences for failing to follow the law in the Order,” Abbott said in the post.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Does narrowed question in Trump immunity case benefit special counsel? Some commentators think so

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 29, 2024, 3:09 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court avoided former President Donald Trump’s most extreme arguments—including that he has absolute immunity from prosecution for any acts while in office—when it crafted the question presented in its grant of certiorari Wednesday in the special counsel’s case over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

This is the question presented as crafted by the Supreme Court: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

What is the significance of the narrowed question? Some commentators think that it benefits special counsel Jack Smith.

In a social media thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, noted that the question focuses on official acts and presidential immunity, rather than absolute immunity.

Goldsmith sees the language as indicating that the high court might be considering a subset of official acts for which a president might get immunity. Those acts could be core functions under Article II or a subset of presidential powers. He speculates that acts carrying immunity might include pardons, firing of officials and self-defensive military action.

“But such a ruling wouldn’t come close to giving POTUS a blank check in office since most official acts would not be core Article II functions,” Goldsmith wrote.

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, also attributes significance to the phrasing of the question presented.

“My own view is that the [question presented] is written rather carefully to narrow exactly what the court is doing, both to cut out of the case entirely some of Trump’s more … extreme … arguments (like double jeopardy) and to also signal that the court is focused on the official acts question (strongly implying that it has no interest in recognizing any broader immunity),” Vladeck wrote in a Q&A on his One First Substack site.

Even if Trump wins on the narrowed question, there is room for Smith to go forward with the prosecution based on nonofficial acts, Vladeck wrote.

A column in the Washington Post agrees that the “official acts” language means that the Supreme Court could rule for Trump and still leave discretion for Smith to argue that trying to overthrow an election is not an official act.

In a Lawfare blog post written before the cert grant, Martin S. Lederman, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, elaborates on why he thinks that there is no serious argument that Trump was acting in his official capacity when he engaged in the alleged conduct.

“For starters,” Lederman wrote, “all but one of the counts of the indictment allege that Trump conspired with others to violate the law through fraudulent conduct. And, with one discrete exception, Trump’s alleged agreements to commit such fraud were with persons outside the government”—including, apparently, four lawyers.

“It’s very hard to see how Trump’s agreements with the five private parties might have been undertaken in his official capacity as president of the United States,” Lederman wrote.

Even if there was such a rare case, “under no possible understanding of a president’s proper role” would an official presidential duty include entering into an agreement to defraud the United States and obstruct its proceedings, he wrote.

Even if the Supreme Court paves the way for prosecution, the timing of its decision could be critical, according to three commentators writing at MSNBC. If the Supreme Court rules in late June, the trial might not begin until September, “making a verdict before the election difficult, if not impossible.”

The MSNBC authors are Norman Eisen, a former House Judiciary Committee impeachment counsel; Joshua Kolb, a former Senate Judiciary Committee law clerk; and Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21.