OPEN LETTER

Elite Lawyers Must End Their Silence and Unite to Protect the Justice System

June 28, 2021

Apr 23, 2025

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Lawyers Defending American Democracy and Other Key Legal Groups Issue an Open Letter to Elite Law Firms

Today, leading American lawyers from the highest levels of the profession have issued an open letter calling on the country’s elite law firms to join forces against President Donald Trump's baseless Executive Orders. In these executive edicts, President Trump seeks to punish law firms by prohibiting them from representing clients and causes the President disfavors and otherwise involving himself in the operations of the firms’ hiring policies and choice of pro bono representation.

Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), Lawyers Allied Under Rule of Law (LAUROL), and The Steady State, represent over a thousand lawyers who have worked at the highest levels of the profession including as Senior Partners in AmLaw 200 firms, Judges, State Attorneys General, Senior Justice Department Officials, General Counsel of Fortune 500 Companies, and State Bar Presidents.  

In their open letter, these organizations call on the nation’s top firms to develop a unified response in opposing the President’s unconstitutional actions and threats to the rule of law and the justice system. The open letter states: 

Donald Trump’s Executive Orders targeting more than a dozen of the nation’s most prestigious law firms have brought the entire legal profession to a critical juncture. 

Four of the elite firms targeted by these Executive Orders have sued the Trump Administration in separate actions, and all four have won temporary restraining orders against the President.  The courts found that these firms were likely to prove that the President’s actions are illegal, unconstitutional, and unenforceable. As one Judge explained: “The framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power.” More than 800 other firms, including 17 of the prestigious firms that comprise the so-called “AmLaw 200,” have joined Amicus briefs in their defense.  

These 21 AmLaw 200 who have chosen to fight stand in contrast to the 9 firms that have negotiated “agreements” with the President, and the 170 firms who have taken no position at all. 

Lawyers Defending American Democracy calls on the 170 undeclared AmLaw 200 firms to avoid the path of those now notorious nine. We call on these 170 firms to convene – as a group – to create a unified response to the President’s unconstitutional actions and threats to the rule of law and system of justice. 

If you are one of these firms, you understand that the threatened executive edicts are not legal or enforceable.  Rather, they are a tactic designed to enlist you in undermining the rule of law. Any concession by your prestigious firms only helps the Administration intimidate the legal profession from challenging its actions. 

We ask you to recognize that participating in the Administration‘s efforts to pick off individual firms and negotiate with them individually is futile, harmful, and unnecessary. The justice system requires that firms set aside their natural competition and coalesce as a profession at this critical moment.

To read more, download the open letter below. 

LDAD is honored to have contributed to this open letter. To see additional articles and writing by LDAD on the topic of the President’s attacks on the legal profession, see Our Work and follow us on LinkedIn. 

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