How Can You Practice Government Contracts or Lobbying or Give Political Advice in a Large Law Firm Setting When This Kind of Stuff Is Going Down?

What, me worry?

-- Alfred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine.

This is both a hard and an easy blog to write.

It is hard because I am loath to inject politics into my business relationships. One of the things my father taught me as a boy is that your customers are of both political parties and there is no reason to gratuitously turn them off by putting a partisan bumper stick on your car. Their contrary political beliefs deserve to be respected. The reality is we are a 50/50 nation and very divided. And despite that, most people don’t really care about your politics. The temptation is to go quietly about your business as usual and not inject politics into your legal enterprise.

It is easy because what is happening now with the Trump Administration clearly calls out for a forceful response. The bullying actions of the President are a clear and present danger to democracy as we know it on many levels. The chief executive thinks he is a despot. He is unlawfully targeting so many things for destruction that make America great that I can’t remain silent. There is the smell of tyranny in the air. He says he wants a third term of office despite the constitutional bar, and he expressly says he isn’t kidding. He notes that there are ways he can do it, just like Putin did it in Russia, say by running as Vice President, and then making his running mate J. D. Vance resign the office of the Presidency. And to silence his opposition, he has taken aim at intimidating lawyers engaged in the practice of anything related to government relations – be it  political matters, lobbying, or government contracts.

My colleague, Howard Wolf-Rodda, gave his take on the same subject last week. See https://www.awrcounsel.com/blog/2025/3/27/president-to-government-contractors-dont-hire-lawyers-i-dont-like . Here is my perhaps less temperate view.

The President’s Executive Orders (either recently issued or contemplated) are focused for the moment on four specific large law firms. He has demanded that they work on his causes pro bono as penitence and pay “tribute” or else. The “or else” includes barring the firms’ lawyers from Government buildings, debarring them from any federal contracts, and promising to do the same to their clients if they don’t fire them. The intent is to destroy the law firms, and make the rainmakers and clients flee for more pliant firms. The President’s actions undermine the whole premise of rule of law, our system of checks and balances, and the principle that everyone deserves to choose their lawyer. This is so un-American, and so crude, that I feel it necessary to violate my first rule of blogging, which is to put myself in the other party’s shoes, and to try and see things from their perspective, and to look for middle ground. There is no middle ground with tyranny.

I am a government contracts lawyer by profession and engaged in private practice. I have worked most of my life for big law firms, and the sad reality is that I likely couldn’t publish a blog like this while affiliated with one of those firms. It would be deemed too provocative and risky. The nail that sticks out gets hammered. But I can do so now, because in a small firm I don’t need to answer to a Committee or get approval for what I write. I have the luxury of taking a position reflecting my conscience.

Of course, I am talking my own “book.” My clients have disputes with the Government. That means they have displeased the Government, usually before they even come to me. My job is to press their case cases and try to get the best result possible. I am a highway man of sorts  – telling the Government to stand and deliver, My job isn’t to please the King. That means I fight the Government agencies and try to persuade them to reverse course or to get a judge to overrule their actions. My job isn’t to knuckle under to authority or to give in to bullies. What kind of mouse of a lawyer would knuckle under in those circumstances anyway, and would you really want to be represented by them after knowing that was the measure of the lawyer you had retained? But unfortunately, many lawyers are mice and two of the four law firms quickly bowed down to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump obviously represents something very un-American in spirit. These kinds of Executive Orders undermine the inherent adversarial nature of the American legal system. The President’s Executive Orders  pervert that adversarial system by making the ostensibly private big firm lawyers just another cog in a unified  bureaucratic and totalitarian judicial system. That is what Mr. Trump wants. He want to eliminate any source of opposition to his exercise of executive power.

If you’re a government contractor, that is a frightening prospect. It means you must heel to the authority of the government, no matter how arbitrary or unfair it may be. And don’t expect any large law firm to be your knight errant, because they are under the control and subject to the caprice of the government too. It is the integration of political, lobbying  and government contracts practices into the large firms which is most threatened by this new order.

For most of my life, I thought we  were a single nation, with two great political parties, who shared a common commitment to rule of law, democracy, and the peaceful transfer of power. That is the essence of what made America great. Mr. Trump, however, doesn’t share those basic values.

For those of you who voted for Mr. Trump, I ask at what point are you going to get off the bus? Mr. Trump never jokes because he doesn’t have a sense of humor. He is an autistic political savant of sorts. This use of his office for personal vendettas, his repudiation of our allies and treaties, his embrace of our enemies, and his announcement over the week-end that he isn’t joking about a third term, each make the choice painfully clear. Are you for the Constitution as amended -- free speech, freedom of assembly, a free press, equal protection, due process, separate of powers, independent judiciary, checks and balances, private lawyers, etc.? Or do you wish to have power centralized in a corrupt unitary executive to whom everyone must bow down? Are you a republican (in the classic sense) or are you for autocracy? Do you really want a hereditary King Don to rule over you?

As Benjamin Franklin reputedly said, after signing the Constitution, we have given you “a republic, if you can keep it.”  Well, almost 240  years later, the nation is awaiting your answer.