They are among the nation’s richest law firms, and they employ some of the most loquacious litigators. But with their industry under attack from President Trump, most of these leaders of Big Law are not speaking up to defend one of their own.
For nearly three weeks, there has been a broad effort in the legal community to collect signatures from law firms for a so-called friend of the court brief supporting Perkins Coie, the first firm Mr. Trump targeted with an executive order in his retribution campaign against perceived enemies. Perkins Coie has sued, and a judge has temporarily blocked the president’s order, which jeopardized its ability to represent government contractors and limited its access to federal buildings.
Most of the nation’s top firms by revenue were asked to sign the brief supporting Perkins Coie, according to people with knowledge of the matter, and all of them were made aware of the signature campaign.
But so far, none of the top 10 firms has committed to signing, even after a soft deadline came and went on Tuesday, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Only a few firms in the top 50, as ranked by American Lawyer, have committed their signatures.
The brief — drafted by Donald B. Verrilli Jr., a solicitor general during President Barack Obama’s administration — is meant to be a show of strength against Mr. Trump. And ahead of the deadline, more than 200 firms in total have signed, mostly midsize and boutique firms.
Mr. Verrilli, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a prominent firm but not among the nation’s top revenue generators, is expected to submit the brief in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., as soon as Friday, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Firms can still sign before then, and if the signature gathering gains momentum some larger names might ultimately appear.
Some of those larger firms have offered their signatures only if enough of their peers signed on as well, and several top-20 firms are still considering whether to sign, the people with knowledge of the matter said.
The brief presents a gut check moment for the law firm industry, testing its resolve in the face of an attack on the core tenets of the profession. And the difficulty in getting signatures from the biggest firms like Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, the industry’s top revenue generators, reflects a broader split among law firms since Mr. Trump began issuing executive orders against firms that he claimed were hostile to his administration.
Kirkland and Latham declined to comment.
For most of the big firms, the hesitation stems not from ideological opposition to the brief, the people with knowledge of the matter said. They quietly support it, but are concerned that signing the document would draw Mr. Trump’s ire and cost them clients, or that signing would not meaningfully help Perkins Coie.
Some also note that signing the brief is not the only way the legal world is backing firms ensnared in Mr. Trump’s executive orders. Two large and prestigious firms, Williams & Connolly and Cooley, are representing firms in lawsuits challenging the orders.
And the New York City Bar Association on Wednesday issued a statement of support for the lawsuits.
“The City Bar believes that it is important for legal organizations throughout the country to affirm the rights of lawyers and law firms to association, freedom of expression, due process and freedom in their contractual relationships,” the statement said.
Separately on Wednesday, a group of 17 former presidents of the District of Columbia Bar submitted their own friend-of-the-court brief in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, denouncing Mr. Trump’s targeting of the law firm as “patently unlawful” and saying that it posed a grave danger to the rule of law in the seat of the nation’s government.
The D.C. Bar has a different president each year, and Philip Lacovara, who led the group in 1988-89 and helped organize the effort, said they were able to reach 25 past presidents who were eligible to sign.
Most of the 17 who signed worked for smaller law firms, organizations or companies — or were retired. The eight who declined to sign the brief mostly work for large law firms including Kirkland & Ellis.
Perkins Coie was the first law firm to oppose an executive order in court. Two other firms, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, have recently done the same. All three are top 100 firms by revenue, and all three had ties to the investigation into Russia’s support for Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
WilmerHale was once home to Robert Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director who served as the special counsel leading that investigation. Jenner & Block had employed a top prosecutor who worked with Mr. Mueller. And Perkins Coie was involved in a dossier compiled during the 2016 campaign about Mr. Trump’s potential ties to Russia.
While federal judges have blocked the most onerous aspects of the orders for now — and the firms are expected to continue to prevail in the courts — they could sustain some financial pain. Perkins Coie disclosed in a court filing that it “already lost significant revenue due to the loss of clients.”
Unwilling to stomach losses like that, other firms in Mr. Trump’s cross hairs have chosen to strike a deal.
Paul Weiss, a large firm with deep ties to Democrats and their causes that helped sue the first Trump administration, initially considered taking legal action after it was hit with an executive order. But as many of its corporate partners feared a financial fallout, it opted for a deal with Mr. Trump that required the firm to do $40 million in pro bono work for causes supported by the White House.
Last month, the firm’s chairman lamented that other firms did not come to Paul Weiss’s defense.
“We waited for firms to support us in the wake of the president’s executive order,” Paul Weiss’s chairman, Brad Karp, wrote in an email to the firm at the time. “Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.”
Last week, to head off an executive order, the giant firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono work on issues that Mr. Trump supports.
The deals with Mr. Trump were seen by many in the legal world as a capitulation and a way to embolden the White House.
On Tuesday, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a law firm that employs Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, agreed to a deal with Mr. Trump to avoid an executive order.
A list of the names of the firms signing Mr. Verrilli’s brief in support of Perkins Coie has not been disclosed. But at least one firm has publicly declared its support: Keker, Van Nest & Peters, a prominent San Francisco litigation boutique.
In a recent New York Times guest essay, the named partners at that firm called on more to join, arguing, “If lawyers and law firms won’t stand up for the rule of law, who will?”
But Mr. Trump has suggested that many firms are more interested in signing deals.
“They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” he said last week, adding that law firms are saying: “‘Where do I sign? Where do I sign?’”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
