JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump promised retribution on the campaign trail. So far, as president, he's not just targeting government agencies. He's also going after private law firms.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have a lot of law firms that we're going to be going after because they were very dishonest people. They were very, very dishonest. I could go point after point after point.
SUMMERS: Speaking there to Fox News, it is not clear what he meant by dishonesty, but it is clear that his actions target lawyers who challenged his first administration or who helped pursue legal battles against him. Trump has issued executive orders sanctioning specific firms, and on Friday night he issued an executive memo threatening sanctions on any law firms that pursue, quote, "frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States," end quote.
Rachel Cohen has spoken up about all of this on her social media in an open letter and recently in a viral, all-staff email resigning from her firm, Skadden, Arps, if it would not stand up in response to these executive actions. Attorney Rachel Cohen joins us now. Welcome to the program.
RACHEL COHEN: Thank you so much for having me.
SUMMERS: Rachel, when you gave your two weeks' notice, you wrote - I'm going to quote you here - "do not pretend that what is happening is normal or excusable." So I'd like to start by asking you, what was the breaking point for you that pushed you to resign?
COHEN: The breaking point was a combination of two things. The first was feeling confident that I had done everything in my power other than resigning. But what was ultimately the triggering event was Paul Weiss' decision to capitulate to the Trump administration to get him to rescind an executive order that he had issued against them. I think it's important to note that the Paul Weiss executive order was issued after a judge had already issued a temporary restraining order for a very, very similar executive order levied against the law firm Perkins Coie. In a normal, functioning, American legal dynamic, you would never issue a near-identical executive order to one that had just been functionally enjoined, and a law firm certainly would not then refuse to fight that executive order.
SUMMERS: I just want to take a second to spell out some of the details of the Paul Weiss case for people who may not be as familiar with it as you are. President Trump levied this executive order to strip the firm of security clearances and government contracts in part because it rehired a lawyer who had left the firm to prosecute a case against Trump. And then Paul Weiss agreed to concessions to get the executive order rescinded. That included $40 million in pro bono work in cases aligning with the administration's agenda. Spell out for me why that is so troubling to you.
COHEN: There's two pieces of the settlement that troubled me, and you've identified them. The first is this agreement to provide the $40 million in pro bono legal services. And so you have associates at a firm that has always held itself out to be kind of at the cutting edge of important pro bono work and justice work in addition to their billable obligations - you have these associates that are now being told that their firm is going to provide millions of dollars' worth of free legal support to the Trump administration to advance its aims. So that's the first thing.
But the second thing that troubled me is that they committed to a total evaluation by an outside evaluator, to be agreed between Paul Weiss and the Trump administration, of their hiring practices. I have many friends in the industry that expressed fear of doxing or being pushed out as associates who are nonwhite within this industry. If Paul Weiss is giving him this - and it makes me certain that other firms are going to give him this - I think I have to trust that they are and be proactive here.
SUMMERS: Yeah. Now, Paul Weiss took in over $2.6 billion in revenue last year, according to Law360, and its chairman said in an internal email, even given that figure - I'm quoting - "it was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the administration." Hearing that, what does that say about the state of the legal profession at this moment?
COHEN: I think if I hear that and I'm a client, I'm questioning why I'm paying $3,000 an hour for a law firm that doesn't think it can win a legal battle over an executive order that has functionally already been enjoined.
SUMMERS: In your view, what do you think President Trump is trying to do in picking this fight with Big Law?
COHEN: I think that picking a fight with Big Law is one prong of his multipronged attack on the judiciary system. He's intimidating judges. He is ignoring judges' orders and deporting people over them. And I think that his goal here is to kneecap effective pro bono representation and public-interest representation challenging him. The Trump administration's telling us, I don't care how the courts decide, but also it's even easier for me if there aren't lawyers willing to go there in the first place.
SUMMERS: Apart from rhetoric, is there anything that you see that law firms can do collectively here?
COHEN: I think that the first step, collectively, is going to be rhetoric. It's going to be putting out a statement saying, we're committed to continued representation, whether it is representation that the Trump administration views as supportive of it or adverse to it. But then the next step of collective action has to be putting their money where their mouth is. I'm not focused on that piece at this moment because right now I can't even get their mouth there.
SUMMERS: That was attorney Rachel Cohen. Rachel, thank you.
COHEN: Thank you so much.
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