Yesterday, our firm was proud to sign on to an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie’s lawsuit (View Amended Appendix) against the Trump Administration, challenging an unlawful and retaliatory executive order which (among other things) has jeopardized the firm’s ability to represent government contractors and access federal courts.
Over 500 law firms across the country joined us in denouncing the Trump Administration’s actions, which seek to silence critics, eliminate legal accountability and bully all of us into meek submission of the MAGA worldview. We were proud to reaffirm foundational principles of the rule of law. Indeed, as our brief points out,
“For our system of justice to operate, members of the bar must be free to advocate zealously for all their clients, large and small, rich and poor, without fear of retribution. They must be free, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, to defend “the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 163 (1803). Without such zealous advocacy, there is no prospect of equal justice under law.
Sadly, it has been widely reported that many law firms – especially our country’s largest and wealthiest law firms – have chosen another path in this critical moment. While we do not purport to know the specific business and ethical considerations driving their decisionmaking, we do know this: The legal profession has a profound obligation to fight for equal justice under the law and to use our skills to protect, and indeed improve, our country’s imperfect but remarkable experiment in multiracial democracy.