Here at Adam Smith, Esq. our robust, and for 20+ years inviolate, policy has been never to comment on current affairs. That ends today.
We value no civic principle more highly than the primacy of the Rule of Law. And we have long had the luxury of being able to take it for granted. No longer.
We now have a frontal challenge to that pillar of belief in the form of President Trump’s order directing federal agencies to scrap contracts with Paul Weiss and the firm’s clients and suspend the firm’s lawyers’ security clearances. First it was Covington, then Perkins Coie, and it was implausible but still possible to hope that these were one-off’s. Industry leaders were noticeably quiet. You may have taken chilly comfort in “not my problem” or “there but for the grace of God…” up until now, but that playbook is over.
The Administration has launched a concerted program of revenge against any law firm representing clients out of White House favor. No law firm, no matter how highly credentialed or historically esteemed, is safe.
Here’s the problem: The market dynamics of “collective action” are very dangerous indeed, and here is where these black lists, reprehensible as they may be, cross over into existential threat. (The “collective action” problem arises when each of a group of players pursues their own solitary self-interest resulting in disaster for all.)
As the intrepid Meghan Tribe reported today (reference above):
The legal industry has been largely quiet in response to the president’s moves against Paul Weiss and the other firms, […]
It remains to be seen if Trump’s decision to target a third major law firm is a galvanizing moment for the rest of the legal industry.
We have now seen that the Executive Branch can attack any and all of us at will. As Janet said in that same article: “[This is] now a pattern. It’s an industry problem.”
And in the face of that systemic threat–white collar extortion, call it what it is—we, meaning you, Dear Reader—have power. It will require a united stand, but the stakes could hardly be higher:
“Before, other law firm leaders could say, ‘well it’s not me,’” Bruce MacEwen, also of Adam Smith, said. Now, clients who jump ship may move to another firm that also winds up on Trump’s target list. “That is the reason that there may be a prayer of collective action,” MacEwen said. […]
Trump’s order is “brilliantly diabolical,” Stanton said, because clients and lawyers are “completely mobile.” Whether it works “will depend on people doing nothing and the industry doing nothing,” she said.
In other words, today is your day. Or not. The choice is yours.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke
Courtesy Gemini Image Generation
