Latest news with #SkaddenArps
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
899 — The Three Numbers Alarming the Bond Market
Taxing foreign capital could be another nail in the coffin of American exceptionalism. Emerging markets could benefit. Save To get John Authers' newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here. Three numbers are sending a spasm of concern through Wall Street: 899. That's the clause of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act currently before the Senate that gives the Treasury secretary the power to levy retaliatory taxes on the US investments of foreign countries that have levied 'unfair taxes' on US companies. This isn't a legal column, but you might try useful explainers from Baker McKenzie, or Skadden Arps, or McDermott Will & Emery.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
"This is an existential threat": Legal experts warn that the rule of law is on the ropes
When Rachel Cohen resigned from her job at a big law firm earlier this year, she was giving up on three years of service and a $300,000 salary. But she found it more important to send a message about President Donald Trump — and her firm's capitulation to an administration she sees as being engaged in extreme overreach and intimidation. Her resignation 'was attempting to get the firms to collectively recognize this moment for what it is: for the real, existential, nonpartisan threat to legal processes and procedures that we're seeing in this country,' Cohen, a former Skadden Arps associate attorney, said during a panel discussion last week. In mid-March, Cohen penned an open letter, now signed by nearly 2,000 lawyers, pledging to resign if her employer refused to push back on Trump's series of executive orders targeting specific law firms for previously representing clients and causes counter to his interests. The firm accepted Cohen's resignation and shortly after reached a $100 million, pro bono services deal with the administration. 'Since this is an existential threat, as opposed to a difference of political opinion, it's very important that we act and speak collectively and in a measured and honest way,' Cohen said. 'Once ... [it] became extremely clear that the industry wasn't going to act collectively, the efficacy of internal advocacy had run out for me, personally, at least.' Cohen's remarks came during a "Speak Up for Justice" webinar last week, which sought to shed light on the current strain and political pressure on the judiciary and the legal profession. Moderated by forum founder Paul Kiesel, a Los Angeles trial lawyer, the discussion comes amid a fraught moment in which officials are calling for the impeachment of judges, the Trump administration is ostensibly defying court orders, FBI agents have arrested a state judge and Americans are raising concerns about a one-sentence provision in the Trump-backed House reconciliation bill that would weaken the power of the courts to enforce a contempt citation. 'It's essential to have courts, to have the support of people of the judges and the courts, and so it's really important at a moment like now that we really highlight and don't normalize or rationalize attacks on judges and on the court, because by doing so we're harming ourselves and we're harming the protector of our constitutional rights,' argued Ashley Akers, an ex-federal prosecutor who resigned from the post just days after Trump took office. Throughout the discussion, panelists referenced Chief Justice John Roberts' mid-May critique of people 'trashing the justices" and declaration that the rule of law is 'endangered' most among young people. 'When the Chief Justice said rule of law is in danger, I take him seriously. I don't think he was exaggerating,' North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat who previously served as a U.S. representative for the state, said during the discussion. 'I don't think the average person, when they have the opportunity to hear a nonpartisan account of the rule of law — the situation we're in — I don't think it strikes them as an exaggeration.' U.S. Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown issued an even stronger warning than Roberts, admonishing the recent uptick in attacks of the bench and calls for impeachment, noting recent reports of escalations in threats against judges in the last five months. 'We know that words matter. We know that what's perpetrated on the internet and elsewhere matters,' she said on the panel. 'I think that we have to say that these current attacks on our judicial system, which are unprecedented and have begun to look like those in other countries, which he never really thought we would see — it is this backsliding.'Panelists also emphasized the physical harm that the charged rhetoric toward judges and other officials can cause, referencing high-profile instances of political violence over the last two decades. Will Rollins, a former California congressional candidate and Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor, connected the threat of assassination he faced as a candidate to the fatal shooting of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas' son in 2020 by a disgruntled litigant and other acts. 'For the first time in my life, I understood, personally, how fear can stifle speech, debate and perhaps worst of all, the willingness to serve at all — the idea that you are putting yourself or people you love at risk, just for speaking your mind, just for disagreeing, just for running for office, just for serving on the bench,' he said. 'That is why attacks on Judge Esther Salas and her family, Congressman Steve Scalise, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, President Trump, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and her family and far too many others throughout our recent history, are really attacks on all of us,' Rollins added. 'They are attacks on the Constitution itself.'
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A law associate making $300,000 a year at Skadden Arps quit over the firm's deal with Donald Trump
When Rachel Cohen took a job as an associate at Skadden Arps in Chicago three years ago, she expected long hours, some tedious work, and extremely good pay. What she wasn't expecting was to be thrust into the middle of a crisis involving her white shoe firm and the president of the United States. In the first few months of his administration, Donald Trump has taken aim at policies he disagrees with in both the public and private sector. But law firms as a category have come under special scrutiny; Trump has signed a number of executive orders targeting specific major legal practices by name. Trump accuses these firms of things like undermining elections, unlawful hiring practices, and attempting to limit constitutional freedoms through certain pro bono work. But the firms that he has targeted all have one thing in common: They have previously butted heads with Trump, or supported Democrats. The increased and unprecedented scrutiny have prompted nine firms, including Paul Weiss, Willkie Farr, and Skadden Arps, to preemptively strike deals with the president, pledging a total of $940 million in free legal work thus far. 'Skadden is pleased to have achieved a successful agreement with President Trump and his Administration," executive partner Jeremy London said in a March 28 statement posted by Trump on the president's social media platform, Truth Social. 'We firmly believe that this outcome is in the best interests of our clients, our people, and our Firm.' Cohen could not have felt more strongly that the firm was taking a wrong turn. 'I felt the firm was on the wrong side of history,' she says. Cohen was brought into the firm as a financial specialist to work on large M&A transactions, and had been there a little under three years when Skadden made the announcement. Cohen said she first started noticing a slight shift in attitude at the firm after the president began taking aim at other major legal practices. 'When Trump started coming for law firms based on past representation, it was so outside the bounds of the normal and a clear intimidation technique, so I was shocked when there was no immediate response from the company; it struck me as strange,' she says. Skadden did not reply to Fortune's request for comment. On March 17 the firm was among many hit with a demand letter from acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Andrea Lucas, requesting information about the firm's DEI-related employment practices, alleging a potential violation of the Civil Rights Act. With many associates, including herself, seeing the letter as a 'clear intimidation tactic,' Cohen assumed at this point that Skadden would speak up and strike back, but that didn't happen. 'We knew nothing because the firm wouldn't talk about it,' she says. Feeling concerned about the firm's future and what she saw as its lackadaisical approach to the president's demands, Cohen went to the press to address her concerns. She expected to be disciplined by management for her actions, which she says were clearly against company policy. But besides a couple light-hearted warnings, the company did nothing. Cohen says that she believes that was because it was looking to mitigate bad press on the issue. 'They were going to just let me stomp my feet and tucker myself out like a toddler and then push me out at the end of the year once the media attention died off,' Cohen says. Skadden did not reply to Fortune's repeated requests for comment. In the meantime, in addition to committing 'at least' $100 million in pro bono legal work for causes the administration supports, Skadden has also made efforts to dismantle DEI programs, by overhauling their current hiring strategy and putting an end to their employee resource groups, Bloomberg Law reports. Cohen wasn't the only one who was outraged. Earlier this month, a group of more than 80 alumni from Skadden sent a letter to London protesting the firm's deal with Trump. 'In light of Skadden's position, it is outrageous and self-interested that rather than fulfilling the legal profession's oath and standing in solidarity with fellow law firms that were fighting to uphold the Constitution, Skadden caved to bullying tactics instead,' the letter states. Concerned that the firm was moving in a direction that violated her own ethics, Cohen quit Skadden on March 20. In doing so, she left behind a compensation package that she estimates would be more than $300,000 this year. Cohen isn't the only one to leave her job at a major law firm over its arrangements with the Trump administration. A leading federal contracts lawyer at Perkins Coie reportedly left the firm over its deal with Trump, and more than half a dozen associates at other firms have quit publicly due to their company's deals with the president. This includes lawyers who previously worked at Kirkland, Latham, Simpson Thacher, and Willkie Farr, which have all made deals with the administration to offer pro bono services as well as commitments to 'not engage in illegal DEI discrimination,' the president announced on Truth Social last month. None of these firms responded to Fortune's repeated requests for comment. Some law student organizations are also taking a stance. One current JD student at Georgetown Law, Caleb Frye, says the student group he helps run, which works to place top graduates at major energy-focused law firms, recently sent a letter to Skadden canceling a networking event with the company due to its deal with Trump. 'We go to big firms like Skadden because we think that we're going to get the best training opportunities, the best career development,' Frye, student and co-president of the Georgetown Energy Law Group, tells Fortune. 'But now, I can't look people in my group in the eye and tell them that they're going to get the best training opportunities at a firm that isn't even willing to litigate on behalf of its own constitutional rights.' Earlier this month, the National Institute for Workers' Rights filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Skadden. The group alleges that the firm engaged in unfair labor practices by making efforts to restrict the email access of employees expressing concerns, submitting resignations, and planning 'coordinated rejections of recruitment activities' over its Trump agreement. Skadden did not reply to Fortune's repeated request for comment. Some law firms that were targeted by Trump are pushing back on the administration. After the president issued an executive order against Susman Godfrey, accusing the firm of weaponizing the American legal system and 'degrading the quality of American elections,' the firm sued him. On April 15, a federal judge granted the firm's request for temporary relief from the order, the New York Times reported. As for Cohen, she's unsure of her future, but says it will likely be outside of the legal profession. She says she feels what Skadden is doing is much larger than just promising free legal work to the president, adding the company's actions have led her to question the ethics of management and reduced her faith in the entire legal system. 'I don't know if there's a law after this,' says Cohen. 'It seems like the country is moving towards kangaroo courts and I'm certainly not going to commit myself to the practice of law as a full-time job until I see how things unfold.' This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge strikes down 'unprecedented' Trump order targeting Perkins Coie law firm
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday struck down President Donald Trump's executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie in a blistering opinion calling the president's efforts 'an unprecedented attack' on the U.S. judicial system. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, issued a permanent injunction barring the enforcement of any part of Trump's order from March, which focused on the firm's representation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and its work with billionaire donor George Soros. 'No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'' Howell wrote. 'The importance of independent lawyers to ensuring the American judicial system's fair and impartial administration of justice has been recognized in this country since its founding era,' Howell wrote, referencing John Adams' decision to represent eight British soldiers charged with murder in connection with the Boston Massacre. She said Trump's order 'violates the Constitution and is thus null and void.' The Justice Department and Perkins Coie did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night. Trump's executive order limited Perkins Coie employees' access to government buildings, revoked security clearances at the firm, and ordered the heads of all federal agencies to terminate contracts with the firm and refrain from hiring employees who worked had grilled Justice Department lawyer Richard Lawson at a hearing over the measure last week, and Lawson was unable to answer basic questions about the other firms that had reached deals with the White House to avoid their own executive orders. Howell also used a footnote in Friday's order to criticize firms that took deals with the White House, writing that 'some clients may harbor reservations about the implications of such deals for the vigorous and zealous representation to which they are entitled from ethically responsible counsel, since at least the publicized deal terms appear only to forestall, rather than eliminate, the threat of being targeted in an Executive Order.' Trump has targeted numerous law firms via executive order, prompting some to strike deals with the White House that include committing millions of dollars in pro bono representation for clients and causes supported by the Trump administration and getting rid of internal DEI policies. Concessions by firms such as Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps have generated backlash within the legal community, including a protest letter signed by dozens of Skadden alumni who were outraged by the firm's deal with Trump. In Friday's order, Howell wrote that Trump's 'multi-year history of lodging public attacks' on Perkins Coie and 'his promises during the 2024 campaign to act on his displeasure' toward the firm if he won further demonstrates that the executive order 'was issued to seek retribution against plaintiff for the Firm's representation of clients in political campaigns or litigation, about which President Trump expressed disapproval, dating back to 2017.' 'This purpose amounts to no more than unconstitutional retaliation for plaintiff's First Amendment protected activity,' she added. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Other voices: The integrity of the legal profession is at stake
The bare-knuckled tactics of Trump 2.0 have brought some once-mighty companies and institutions to their knees. Many of the nation's most prominent places of higher education such as Columbia University improbably have agreed in the face of federal funding threats to Trump administration demands on how they deal with dissent on their campuses and even what courses to offer in certain disciplines. Industries, including automakers, have been subject to Trumpian threats if they raise prices even in the face of substantial increases in their costs due to the president's obsession with tariffs. We have yet to see how those companies respond when they face the inevitable choice between substantial decline in profitability and Donald Trump's wrath. But perhaps no institution has come under more duress in the three months since Trump began his second term than the legal profession. Some of the country's biggest law firms — from Paul Weiss to Skadden Arps — have struck deals with the administration to provide hundreds of millions collectively in free legal work for causes Trump favors. They did so after Trump signed executive orders terminating federal contracts for their services and removing security clearances for their attorneys or threatened to do so. Kirkland & Ellis, the nation's largest firm, headquartered in Chicago, is reportedly facing similar threats and is said to be negotiating with the administration. These executive orders almost certainly are unconstitutional, but the firms that have capitulated clearly have made the decision that their businesses were too much at risk to fight. The fear is understandable. Some major corporate clients needing legal representation may not wait to see if the law firm to which it's paying hourly rates in the high hundreds will manage to extricate itself from a Trump-ordered federal freeze-out. . Thankfully, a few firms have chosen differently, led by Chicago-based Jenner & Block. Jenner has won a temporary restraining order against Trump's absurd March 25 executive order targeting the firm for having the temerity to hire a lawyer years ago who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump. That attorney, Andrew Weissmann, left Jenner in 2021. Jenner now is seeking to have the executive order thrown out. It's no accident Trump has targeted law firms so aggressively. In the first two years of Trump's first term, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, it was lawyers and judges who proved to be among the strongest roadblocks to the president's policy goals. Apart from Trump's clearly articulated desire for revenge against people and institutions he feels have wronged him, there's a more nefarious double-pronged strategy at work in this attack on Big Law. The first is that with every settlement, each of which features a pledge to perform free legal work on causes approved by the administration, the president's team is amassing an army of the best, most well-compensated attorneys in America to fight its battles in court. At an event Tuesday in which Trump promised to revive the U.S. coal industry, the president said, 'Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump?' Speaking to coal industry representatives, the president said, 'We're going to use some of those firms to work with you on your leasing and your other things.' Helping producers of some of the most polluting energy sources on Earth gain more access to federal lands and challenge environmental restrictions isn't what comes first to mind for most folks when they think of the rightful beneficiaries of pro bono legal services. But here we are. Secondly, the assaults on the nation's biggest law firms — and the quick surrenders by many of them — have a potentially chilling effect on all firms' decisions of whether to help certain kinds of clients even if they're willing and able to pay for these firms' services. Trump has demonstrated that he will seek to punish firms for representing clients he doesn't like. The rule of law in the U.S. — with foundations based on centuries of progress in Britain forged through battles between subjects and monarchs over what constitutes a fair and just society — is the envy of the world for good reason. A critical underpinning of justice in America is the right to counsel — and the freedom of lawyers to zealously represent any client, no matter how unpopular, distasteful or out of favor with the powers that be. That's what's at stake in this unprecedented attempt by a U.S. president to gain control of this vital cog in our civic workings. Jenner & Block — along with Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, which also are combating Trump's pressure games — is on the right side in this fight and should be commended for its courage. The remainder of Jenner's peers who haven't already capitulated should follow the lead of these three. There's strength in numbers. — The Chicago Tribune
