Lawfare Daily: Trump's Attack on Law Firms
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In recent weeks, President Trump has embarked on a campaign of extortion against law firms, pushing major firms to either reach agreements with the White House or face executive orders in retribution. A number of major firms have chosen to negotiate—agreeing to deals that are already under pressure as the White House seeks to extract more. Four firms—Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey—have chosen to fight retaliatory executive orders in court and have secured temporary restraining orders against the administration.
John Keker and Bob Van Nest joined the podcast to discuss these events. They’re partners at the firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, and—along with their fellow partner Elliot Peters—published an op-ed in the New York Times urging law firms to stand up for themselves. In conversation with Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, they discussed why the Trump administration’s efforts pose such a threat to the rule of law and shared their insights into the dynamics inside law firms right now, what pressures might move a firm to capitulate, and what the firms that have chosen to fight are risking in the process.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:11.5 | patreon.com slash lawfare. That's patreon.com slash lawfare. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, |
| 0:25.2 | Lawfare No Bull, and The Aftermath. |
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| 1:01.2 | Prices may vary. |
| 1:06.0 | To me, the idea that you're going to make such a deal, even if it's relatively cost-free and get |
| 1:12.5 | any benefit out of it, it's shocking. I mean, Trump just will ask for more and more and more. |
| 1:17.6 | I can't see that any of these so-called agreements will actually end up benefiting the firms |
| 1:23.3 | other than they don't have to file a lawsuit, which they will then win. |
| 1:28.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 1:30.3 | I'm Quinta Jurecic, senior editor at Lawfare, with John Kecker and Bob Van Nest, of the law firm |
| 1:36.8 | Kecker, Van Nest, and Peters. |
| 1:39.8 | The way a dictatorship gets formed is for independent voices to not be independent and |
| 1:49.0 | kowtow to the powerful executive. And if that happens to lawyers and the rule of law, |
... |
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