Big Law firms finally have to hold up their end of a Trumpian bargain
Big Law firms have never before done free work for a sitting president, let alone “pro bono” work, which the American Bar Association generally defines to mean work that is “designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means.”
Moreover, these are some of the most powerful and capable law firms in the country. Skadden Arps is ranked as the third-most prestigious firm in the US, while Kirkland & Ellis is the single largest firm in the US by revenue, earning nearly $9 billion in 2024.
And yet Trump now has a promise from these firms and their compatriots to spend nearly a billion dollars of their services — which, at an average hourly rate of $1,000 an hour, works out to roughly a million hours of attorney time — on basically whatever he wants.
This is, plainly put, an affront to the rule of law. By attacking not only the people he doesn’t like, but the lawyers who represent them, Trump has made crystal clear that he does not think his opponents deserve the same legal rights as his allies. This erodes a bedrock of the American legal system: the notion that everyone has the same rights. By entering into these deals, these law firms have helped Trump to chip away at that notion and become complicit in his attack on our legal system. [Continue reading…]