Paul Weiss, an enormous and influential law firm, and Columbia University, long considered a top-rank institution of higher education, have bent their knees to the bully in the White House. They didn’t offer even token resistance. (Many in the legal community now mockingly refer to the law firm as “Paul Wuss.”)
Their cowardice threatens all Americans.
A recent essay in The Contrarian quoted Rachel Cohen, a young lawyer who organized a letter of protest against Donald Trump’s unconscionable attacks on lawyers and law firms, and who subsequently resigned from her job at Skadden Arps, which has evidently also bent the knee. (She’s not alone; see The Telegraph, Junior lawyers revolt after bosses bow to Trump ‘intimidation’.)
“Big law has a huge collective action problem,” she said. “[I]t’s because we are so risk averse.”
As the Contrarian notes,
In a real sense, the collective action problem—no one stands up to the MAGA onslaught because no one else is doing it—now permeates much of civil society (including the press, law firms, and universities). Tech barons feel compelled to cough up $1M for Trump’s inauguration because they don’t want to risk being left off the podium. Paul Weiss capitulates for fear other firms will do the same. Faced with oppressive, powerful forces, it is much easier to go along to get along, keep your head down, and not call attention to oneself. (Hence, the entire Republican Party capitulating to Trump.)
At a time when too many Americans measure their worth by comparisons to others’ wealth, status, and influence, the fear of losing something–access to a politician, research grants, social status, or blue ribbon clients–can become paralyzing. “It is called a collective action problem for a reason—it is hard to break the passivity cycle. But that does not mean it is impossible.
The essay suggests changing the incentives. Law firms bending the knee can be ostracized by associates; universities like Columbia should be shunned by students, faculty, and alumni who understand the degree to which compliance undermines intellectual integrity. When institutions face a downside–shaming– for doing the wrong thing, they might be more inclined to stand by their principles.
Meanwhile, other universities can eschew the ground of least resistance. They can pledge to reject attacks on academic freedom. If and when even one prestigious university lays down such a marker, it will cement its own status as a prominent academic institution that leads with integrity. (Also, one or more schools can offer Columbia students the opportunity to transfer, or could agree to hire researchers whose grants were cut. The loss of prestige, students, and top-notch faculty can be a disincentive to cave.)
I would note that incentivising moral/legal behavior is only necessary for institutions lacking the integrity to act on their purported principles without outside pressure.
The Association of American Law Schools has published a blistering letter denouncing Trump’s unprecedented attacks on legal and educational institutions.
Taken together these actions seek to chill criticism, silence those who may seek to hold the executive branch accountable and intimidate lawyers…. The independence of our universities and judiciary, and the ability of lawyers to fully represent their clients, are at the core of our democracy and have long been supported by all Americans, regardless of political party.
The letter called for collective efforts to push back against the Trump bullies, including coordination with alumni, judges, local bar associations, and other schools, and for public and private demonstrations of support for those Trump targets.
As a former lawyer and academic, I found the immediate, craven surrender of Paul Weiss and Columbia incredibly depressing. A law firm unwilling to defend the rule of law has shamed itself; a University (especially one with an ample endowment, like Columbia) that sells its integrity for a grant betrays the central purpose of academia.
If I were in the market for legal services, I would not employ a law firm that has shown itself unwilling to defend itself. If I was once again seeking an academic position, I would avoid any university unwilling to defend academic freedom.
Several law firms attacked by Trump (Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, Jenner and Block, and most recently, Wilmer Hale) have refused to fold, unlike Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps. At this juncture, I was able to find only five universities that have publicly spoken out against Trump’s vendetta. The president of Wesleyan, Michael Roth, was first and loudest; he’s been joined by presidents of Mount Holyoke, Delta College in Michigan, Trinity Community College in Washington DC, and Princeton.
Their ranks must increase. The rubber has hit the road.
Per today’s note from Robert Hubbell, a group of students from Georgetown University law school stayed away from an event at Skadden Arps in DC. Calling the firm cowards. Another group doing the correct thing.
I don’t believe that individuals or institutions suddenly take up the strategy of “going along to get along”. Rather, this is a learned behavior that has worked for them all along. It is most often seen publicly in the careers of politicians, but is also sadly seen in the lives of many of this country’s most “successful” professional and industrial leaders. And don’t be deluded here. Society (that’s all of us) repeatedly goes along with this behavior by ignoring the little hypocrisies until some large betrayal stares us in the face.
Sheila, we’ve both been inside BigLaw and we’ve both counseled organizations. Say you’re outside counsel to a targeted BigLaw firm and also a university that seek your advice. Doesn’t your analysis start with whether the respective EOs are lawful? Unless you can find a case on all fours, wouldn’t your advice be, “Let’s see what a federal court has to say first before you capitulate.” Such a response also fulfills the fiduciary obligations of the respective governing bodies: “Upon the advice of counsel, we cannot respond to the Trump Administration until we know whether their demands are lawful.” I’m with you, even “token resistance” means a trip to federal court, at a minimum. If the EO is deemed lawful, what are the governing bodies’ fiduciary obligations? The Columbia trustees won’t miss a meal by losing $400 million in federal funding, but hundreds of their employees, their families, and communities will suffer. I keep looking for the “I am Spartacus” moment–yeah, hopeless romantic, here–in the form of “We must all hang together or we’ll all hang separately.” There may be some standing issues here, but where are the ABA and AAU as lead plaintiffs?
“Land of the free and home of the brave?” We have to be the latter if we want to have the former.
looking over the legal field of lawyers,seems many who advertise a certain genre are now the go to for that issue,or they train other lawyers for a fee to practice that genre in court. looking at billboards of some suit pointing a finger at you in saying,in a truck wreck get me! (chicago) (hey chewyFY.)all,said its a buisness venture,and greed wise. sure you can practice for a goal like the ACLU,but that is where and the few orgs who do say something. money,is the key. if i was looking for a lawyer,did you ever work the other side of the fence? are they still required to be truthful without the arrogance of lawspeak in the answer. these highdollar law firms have made the courts tied in knots and the judges former lawyers,a game of who can out wit who like chess. is there really an ally for the people anymore? I send a yearly donation to the ACLU/SPLC. whether they will ever represent me again,is to be seen. these highdollar suits focus on big money,and like a cartel,make sure no one else gets the candy. this may sound precieved ,but after looking over the fact,cases are drawn out for years and the money piles up. id say the bending of the knee,is more like licking the pot.they know what they have,and the deligation to keep ongoing suits profitable.there is no more representation without a fee. Theres an old joke in the joint,
“Capital Punishment” if you dont have the capital,you get the punishment” –been there..
There are lessons learned in history. What may seem for many a long time ago this country had a “red” scare and across the country there were demands for a loyalty oath from academics to remain employed. A number of faculty in California who would not sign a loyalty oath went elsewhere to campuses that did not require it. The University of Oregon was one of those that built a strong science dept and emerged with increased status as an institution.
Another example from Oregon was Senator Wayne Morse who was only one of two senators who voted in opposition to the war in Viet Nam. He had been the dean of law school at University of Oregon.
I went to that institution because of its reputation and proudly graduated and later returned to teach there. So did many others. And that proud history happened elsewhere also in our past so I believe it can and will happen again as more and more of us stand tall against the approach of a dictatorship mentality.
I just reread a portion of the book Built to last by James Collins where he offer the “Tyranny of the OR” which offers one versus the other options. It is this or that not dealing with other options with an And Rather than opposition to each other. Consensus building and collective decision making are a doorway to positive collective change. We can do things better and save money. We can help people in need and have a balanced budget. We can reduce debt any increasing revenue. So time to step away from the Tyranny of OR that is in our way and not allowing us to move forward by striving for a positive consensus addressing our concerns and problems.
Columbia and many other universities caved last year during the anti-genocide marches on campus. The students stood on the right side of history (as they almost always do), but their universities caved. As I like to say, they tipped their hats on where they stood when they invited law enforcement on campus. It’s what happens when you bring on a capitulating capitalist coward as president. What kind of an example do they set for students?
Paul Wuss could have easily called the other firms and rejected Trump via a lawsuit. Their director claims that Trump could have easily destroyed their law firm, which tells me that they are too dependent on the federal government’s largesse. Instead, their capitulation has probably destroyed their firm.
All these tech firms and other oligarchies must be counting on Trump to protect them forever because I keep asking, “What happens once the pendulum swings back in favor of the Democrats?
Couldn’t a strong democratic leader hammer those who capitulated?
I would bet anything that Elon Musk and his Tech Bros are the ones begging Trump to steal a third term for protection from the opposition. Musk has been hammering “lefties” and “wokesters” hard on his social media platform. Peter Thiel and Musk both rely heavily on federal contracts. Aren’t they worried a new administration will cut them loose for their work with Trump and the billionaire oligarchs?
What about all the billionaires within the Trump administration? Will they be hurt by the opposing party when Americans change leadership parties again?
Quite frankly, I’ve not heard anything from the “oppositional party” claiming there will be retribution for those who hurt Americans under the Trump administration. That needs to be a MAJOR part of their campaign strategy.
Either these billionaires and corporate whores believe Trump will rule forever, or they don’t fear the Democratic Party.
p.s. IU University fired a tenured professor last week and scrubbed his and his wife’s pages from their website. The professor’s union sent a letter to IU saying they can’t fire a tenured professor without following their protocol, including a hearing. Once they fired him, the FBI searched their homes in Carmel and Bloomington. With the assistance of an AI research app, I compiled the following about Xiaofeng Wang’s situation:
https://muncievoice.com/36069/fbi-searches-homes-of-xiaofeng-wang/
We have long claimed to be defined by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but after 250 years, they have become cliched. The call to woke is an American, organically grown (or driven to extinction) property.
Be a seed, water, tilling, or fertilizer, and don’t expect to be removed from the cost, but consider the possible rewards.
In other words, revolution is how we return what is otherwise being trampled on. We must claim it now, or the cost to rebuild it will become infinitely higher.
One of your best, Sheila. Thank you.
Sheila. Your previous institution earned a reputation for just this issue. Herman Wells was under pressure to get rid of Kinsey but he pushed back. That made Indiana University a haven for intellectual freedom. I hope the current president takes note.
Vichy Universities and BigLaw? Beware the history we all know too well,
Sheila, if you ever entertain a Top Ten among all your posts in years gone by open for debate, this morning’s argument is framed very well around a very timely issue facing the future of our Republic. Added to your content are excellent well informed comments. And then the children chanted: “Jeremiah WAS a bull frog …”.
Our betters continue to be, in reality, wildly dim-witted. Obviously, the theory from Paul Weiss and Columbia was “If we bend the knee, he’ll leave us alone”.
Never, in the history of egomaniacal tyrants, has knuckling under up front succeeded in keeping you off a lunatic’s hit list. Just ask Disney/ABC how that’s going for them.
These people are pathetic. But, in their defense, so is darn near every elected democrat. So, it’s not like anyone was going to give them cover.
Yes, it has been very sad, with some outrage, to see the knee bending!
Knuckle, by knuckle, is how we might gradually fold our tent, hang up our flag, and become utterly subservient to a lunatic.
If Paul Wuss had waited a few days, before agreeing to serve the devil, they would have seen Perkins Coie win in court. What’s astonishing to me is that they should have known the EO had no legal standing. Are they really lawyers?
The group of billionaire morons who comprise the current administration won’t suffer much more than a little discomfort, despite the outcomes of their actions. Look at Elon, who has lost billions in the market. He’s still out there buying votes as if nothing has happened. Meanwhile, I’m distressed because I lost thirty thousand. I actually didn’t think Orange Jesus could destroy the economy as quickly as he did.
I applaud the example of a group of Georgetown Law students who withdrew from a Skadden Arps- sponsored event hosted in its DC office to recruit students interested in energy law.
As Robert Hubbell’s daily newsletter reports today, these students labeled Skadden Arps “cowards” and opted out of this recruitment event. It is affirming that a group of students can show more courage and dedication to the rule of law than one of the most powerful law firms in the United States.
As Senator Booker is demonstrating by his filibuster right now in the U.S. Senate, what is going on with the Trump administration in the form of a rolling coup is not business as usual in an overt assault on the Constitution. Congress is not a functioning constitutional entity right now in failing to hold Trump accountable for his ongoing violations of the Constitution.
As the Georgetown students have demonstrated by their actions, it is not “business as usual” to cave in to a lawless, morally bankrupt President.
Let’s continue to make “good trouble” in the face of these unacceptable assaults on our democracy.
In 2017, I was the only lawyer in the United States willing to represent women, from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who challenged the legitimacy of trump’s taking the Oval Office. I represented about a dozen people (we included voters from “swing States”) in a similar action. We argued that trump committed treason, that Art. IV, sec 4 (the “invasion clause”) of the U.S. Constitution had been violated by Russia’s cyber invasion of our country. I’m suspended from practice. It’s highly unlikely I’ll be reinstated. I’m proud of what I did. The only ways in which I would change what I did is to not repeat my mistake of believing other members of the bar were friends or, at very least, people who had respect for my work. (I never thought the word “gutless” would be an apt descriptive of so many of them.) And I’m proud of the headers on my blog, especially “The Roberts Court: sluts have fun, whores get paid.
Right on, Sheila. For the life of me, I can’t understand how well-educated, high-priced law firms and well-endowed academic institutions don’t organize a huge collective of other law firms and educational institutions to fight this stuff. Governmental bullying strikes at their core functions and MUST be turned back or we have a dictatorship that follows no rules but its own.
If a law firm won’t fight a rule-breaking government in the law firm’s own behalf, why on earth would anyone feel that law firm would fight for their rights? Likewise, if the full range of issues can’t be debated in educational institutions without penalty, then freedom of expression itself has died.
These institutions have betrayed the trust and best interests of their clients, colleagues, alums, and benefactors. It will take a generation to win back that trust.