{"id":133912,"date":"2025-09-25T14:38:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T22:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/25\/wanna-join-the-legal-fight-against-the-trump-administration-best-break-up-with-biglaw\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T14:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T22:38:14","slug":"wanna-join-the-legal-fight-against-the-trump-administration-best-break-up-with-biglaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/25\/wanna-join-the-legal-fight-against-the-trump-administration-best-break-up-with-biglaw\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanna Join The Legal Fight Against The Trump Administration? Best Break Up With Biglaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the start of the Trump II reign, and the attack on the rule of law <\/a>that coincided with that, it\u2019s been clear that Biglaw wasn\u2019t going to be<\/a> our savior. When directly confronted <\/a>with unconstitutional <\/a>Executive Orders targeting firms on Trump\u2019s list for retribution, more than twice as many major law firm were willing to promise the president nearly a billion dollars in pro bono payola<\/a> for conservative causes or clients<\/a> as were willing to fight the EOs in court. Not a great look for the supposed best in the legal industry.<\/p>\n

Part of Biglaw\u2019s reticence to stand up for the rule of law is the tension between corporate lawyers and litigators<\/a>. Corporate types want to stay on the good side<\/a> of the administration to grease the wheels for deals. Conversely, litigators worried they were signaling that if a firm won\u2019t stand up to the bullying of the Trump administration for themselves,\u00a0they wouldn\u2019t be able to do it for clients<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what if the answer is a firm that doesn\u2019t have that inherent conflict built into its business model? The Wall Street Journal investigates<\/a> the rise of the litigation boutique. Certainly elite litigation boutiques aren\u2019t a new concept, but they\u2019re getting increasingly popular in the Trump era.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the high-profile (and growing<\/a>) Dunn Isaacson created by former Paul Weiss partners <\/a>(the first firm to fold to Donald Trump\u2019s pressure<\/a>), the Abbe Lowell boutique<\/a> \u2014 staffed with lawyers<\/a> who left their capitulating Biglaw firm, Paul Clement\u2019s boutique coming out swinging<\/a> against the Trump administration and defending Biglaw<\/a> against the EOs, or Roberta Kaplan\u2019s boutique getting more talent<\/a>, these small but mighty firms are poised to take on some of the biggest cases. As Karen Dunn noted, \u201cClients are comfortable with boutique firms handling their most consequential litigation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that smaller size is actually an advantage when taking on clients with disputes with the government. As former Skadden partner Benjamin Klubes, who started his own firm after serving as the top lawyer for the federal housing agency during the Biden administration, told the Wall Street Journal:<\/p>\n

\n

But he said he was disappointed by the legal industry\u2019s reluctance to push back against Trump and wanted to start a firm that wouldn\u2019t shy away from representing clients adverse to the government. \u201cA lot of lawyers are taking interest and thinking about better ways to practice law in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The best in the legal field is not necessarily found at the biggest law firms. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Wanna Join The Legal Fight Against The Trump Administration? Best Break Up With Biglaw<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since the start of the Trump II reign, and the attack on the rule of law <\/a>that coincided with that, it\u2019s been clear that Biglaw wasn\u2019t going to be<\/a> our savior. When directly confronted <\/a>with unconstitutional <\/a>Executive Orders targeting firms on Trump\u2019s list for retribution, more than twice as many major law firm were willing to promise the president nearly a billion dollars in pro bono payola<\/a> for conservative causes or clients<\/a> as were willing to fight the EOs in court. Not a great look for the supposed best in the legal industry.<\/p>\n

Part of Biglaw\u2019s reticence to stand up for the rule of law is the tension between corporate lawyers and litigators<\/a>. Corporate types want to stay on the good side<\/a> of the administration to grease the wheels for deals. Conversely, litigators worried they were signaling that if a firm won\u2019t stand up to the bullying of the Trump administration for themselves,\u00a0they wouldn\u2019t be able to do it for clients<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what if the answer is a firm that doesn\u2019t have that inherent conflict built into its business model? The Wall Street Journal investigates<\/a> the rise of the litigation boutique. Certainly elite litigation boutiques aren\u2019t a new concept, but they\u2019re getting increasingly popular in the Trump era.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the high-profile (and growing<\/a>) Dunn Isaacson created by former Paul Weiss partners <\/a>(the first firm to fold to Donald Trump\u2019s pressure<\/a>), the Abbe Lowell boutique<\/a> \u2014 staffed with lawyers<\/a> who left their capitulating Biglaw firm, Paul Clement\u2019s boutique coming out swinging<\/a> against the Trump administration and defending Biglaw<\/a> against the EOs, or Roberta Kaplan\u2019s boutique getting more talent<\/a>, these small but mighty firms are poised to take on some of the biggest cases. As Karen Dunn noted, \u201cClients are comfortable with boutique firms handling their most consequential litigation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that smaller size is actually an advantage when taking on clients with disputes with the government. As former Skadden partner Benjamin Klubes, who started his own firm after serving as the top lawyer for the federal housing agency during the Biden administration, told the Wall Street Journal:<\/p>\n

\n

But he said he was disappointed by the legal industry\u2019s reluctance to push back against Trump and wanted to start a firm that wouldn\u2019t shy away from representing clients adverse to the government. \u201cA lot of lawyers are taking interest and thinking about better ways to practice law in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The best in the legal field is not necessarily found at the biggest law firms. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Wanna Join The Legal Fight Against The Trump Administration? Best Break Up With Biglaw<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the start of the Trump II reign, and the attack on the rule of law that coincided with that, it\u2019s been clear that Biglaw wasn\u2019t going to be our savior. When directly confronted with unconstitutional Executive Orders targeting firms on Trump\u2019s list for retribution, more than twice as many major law firm were willing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-0AfmKH.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}