Breaking News: America’s Top Law Firms Don’t Know How a Protection Racket Works

Welp, the other shoe has dropped. Two top law firms–Kirkland & Ellis and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison–are working for the Commerce Department for free, presumably working up trade agreements in connection with the president’s blatantly illegal tariffs. Previously both Kirkland and Paul Weiss cut deals with the administration after it levied punitive executive orders against them, with the firms pledging eight-figures worth of pro bono legal services and cuts to their DEI programs.

I saw some egg-head commentators suggest that these deals aren’t enforceable contracts and the firms could simply choose not to provide the legal services they have promised, minimizing the impact of these law firms’ capitulation.

But assessing the deals in terms of whether they are “enforceable contracts” or not is a category error. These aren’t “contracts.” The entire enterprise is a protection racket by the administration. It’s like when two guys in Adidas tracksuits show up to your small business warning you of neighborhood crime, and promising that they will “protect” your business for a “small” monthly fee. When you stop paying the fee and your small business mysteriously burns down, you can’t sue them for breach of contract. You’ve agreed to a protection racket, not a contract.

Both Paul Weiss and Kirkland have tremendous self regard as canny litigators, negotiators, and deal-makers. The executive orders targeting them have been rejected by every court to consider them, and both firms have hundreds of highly-credentialed litigators and billions of dollars in revenue to fight them. Kirkland at least can say they’re ideologically in line with the administration–Kenneth Starr (of “The Starr Report” fame) and Jeffrey Clark, who advocated for the Trump administration to invoke the Insurrection Act in connection with its attempted 2020 coup (and who now faces disbarment for his efforts)–are alumni. But Paul Weiss is a big time Democratic Party establishment firm

Regardless of their ideological priors, though, both of these firms are aiding and abetting the administration’s wholesale attack on the rule of law. It is abject cowardice by two large firms who have the resources to fight these attacks. Anyone who works for these firms should be ashamed.