{"id":153468,"date":"2026-06-01T13:38:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/01\/10000-federal-lawyers-are-gone-and-trumps-response-basically-confirms-why-they-left\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:38:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:38:54","slug":"10000-federal-lawyers-are-gone-and-trumps-response-basically-confirms-why-they-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/06\/01\/10000-federal-lawyers-are-gone-and-trumps-response-basically-confirms-why-they-left\/","title":{"rendered":"10,000 Federal Lawyers Are Gone And Trump\u2019s Response Basically Confirms Why They Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times dropped a big one<\/a> on Sunday. After months of anecdotal reporting \u2014 emergency jump teams, \u201cforward this to a friend\u201d recruiting emails, $25,000 signing bonuses, DRAFT watermarks on filed motions \u2014 the paper put hard federal employment data behind what everyone in the legal world already knew was happening. Trump\u2019s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to the Times\u2019s analysis of federal employment data.<\/p>\n

The DOJ-specific numbers are disturbing. The Department of Justice has shed 21 percent of its attorneys, more than 2,600 lawyers over the past 16 months. Six different government agencies have lost more than a quarter of their attorneys, with the Department of Education having lost 53 percent of the lawyers it had at the start of Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a remarkable shift in talent out of the federal government to other places,\u201d Andrew Mergen, director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, told the Times. But Mergen didn\u2019t stop there, delivering a truly devastating line for those hoping to quietly bide their time in government service, \u201cA lot of people I\u2019ve spoken to just in the last few months have said that they would look down on a person if they had a federal job on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that they started during this administration. And some people have explicitly said they would see a person willing to go to work at this D.O.J. as somebody they couldn\u2019t trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a real credibility crisis for an institution that has historically competed for the best legal talent in the country on the basis of prestige alone. The old pitch was simple: you take a pay cut, you do important work, you build a reputation that carries you anywhere. That pitch doesn\u2019t work anymore, and indeed, it\u2019s being actively inverted.<\/p>\n

This tracks with what we\u2019ve been reporting<\/a> for<\/a> months<\/a>. The DOJ that fired its experienced career attorneys has struggled to replace them with anyone of comparable quality. It has lowered its experience requirements.<\/a> It has offered $25,000 signing bonuses.<\/a> It has deployed emergency jump teams of rotating AUSAs<\/a> to plug holes in understaffed offices. It has, I am not making this up, tried recruiting on X<\/a>. And the results have shown up in court filings<\/a>, wrong documents, DRAFT watermarks, missed deadlines, and cases filed in the wrong district<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, you might think the president, upon seeing a New York Times report documenting that his government has hemorrhaged one in five of its lawyers in 16 months, might express some concern. Some acknowledgment that staffing a functioning legal apparatus is, in fact, necessary for governing. But of course not.<\/p>\n

Trump responded on Truth Social<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe New York Times wrote a story today entitled, \u2018Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent,\u2019 as though that\u2019s a bad thing, when actually, it\u2019s very good. The people that are leaving are Radical Left Deep State Lunatics, who are destroying our Country, and Weaponizing Government. Many of them didn\u2019t leave, but were fired! The Failing New York Times writes this, but makes it sound like it\u2019s a terrible thing when actually, it\u2019s just the opposite. We want people that will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, not people that are trying to destroy our Country, that were put in by Obama and Biden and, in many cases, they shouldn\u2019t have been representing the U.S.A. in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a lot to work with here. And, to be clear , noting that \u201cmany of them didn\u2019t leave, but were fired\u201d is the opposite of a flex. Like, we *know* the purge<\/a> is on in the federal government and it\u2019s actually deeply disturbing. Also undermining Trump\u2019s argument that the legal talent exodus is a good thing is the $25,000 the DOJ is offering to get anyone at all to take the jobs these alleged saboteurs left behind.<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly: the president of the United States just confirmed the core premise of the Harvard professor\u2019s concern. If the president himself is saying that people who work for this DOJ are people he actively selected for loyalty over competence, then Professor Mergen\u2019s observation that a DOJ r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is now a trust problem isn\u2019t a liberal talking point. It\u2019s a straightforward inference from the president\u2019s own account of his own personnel decisions.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post 10,000 Federal Lawyers Are Gone And Trump\u2019s Response Basically Confirms Why They Left<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by DON EMMERT\/AFP via Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The New York Times dropped a big one<\/a> on Sunday. After months of anecdotal reporting \u2014 emergency jump teams, \u201cforward this to a friend\u201d recruiting emails, $25,000 signing bonuses, DRAFT watermarks on filed motions \u2014 the paper put hard federal employment data behind what everyone in the legal world already knew was happening. Trump\u2019s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to the Times\u2019s analysis of federal employment data.<\/p>\n

The DOJ-specific numbers are disturbing. The Department of Justice has shed 21 percent of its attorneys, more than 2,600 lawyers over the past 16 months. Six different government agencies have lost more than a quarter of their attorneys, with the Department of Education having lost 53 percent of the lawyers it had at the start of Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a remarkable shift in talent out of the federal government to other places,\u201d Andrew Mergen, director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, told the Times. But Mergen didn\u2019t stop there, delivering a truly devastating line for those hoping to quietly bide their time in government service, \u201cA lot of people I\u2019ve spoken to just in the last few months have said that they would look down on a person if they had a federal job on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that they started during this administration. And some people have explicitly said they would see a person willing to go to work at this D.O.J. as somebody they couldn\u2019t trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a real credibility crisis for an institution that has historically competed for the best legal talent in the country on the basis of prestige alone. The old pitch was simple: you take a pay cut, you do important work, you build a reputation that carries you anywhere. That pitch doesn\u2019t work anymore, and indeed, it\u2019s being actively inverted.<\/p>\n

This tracks with what we\u2019ve been reporting<\/a> for<\/a> months<\/a>. The DOJ that fired its experienced career attorneys has struggled to replace them with anyone of comparable quality. It has lowered its experience requirements.<\/a> It has offered $25,000 signing bonuses.<\/a> It has deployed emergency jump teams of rotating AUSAs<\/a> to plug holes in understaffed offices. It has, I am not making this up, tried recruiting on X<\/a>. And the results have shown up in court filings<\/a>, wrong documents, DRAFT watermarks, missed deadlines, and cases filed in the wrong district<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, you might think the president, upon seeing a New York Times report documenting that his government has hemorrhaged one in five of its lawyers in 16 months, might express some concern. Some acknowledgment that staffing a functioning legal apparatus is, in fact, necessary for governing. But of course not.<\/p>\n

Trump responded on Truth Social<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe New York Times wrote a story today entitled, \u2018Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent,\u2019 as though that\u2019s a bad thing, when actually, it\u2019s very good. The people that are leaving are Radical Left Deep State Lunatics, who are destroying our Country, and Weaponizing Government. Many of them didn\u2019t leave, but were fired! The Failing New York Times writes this, but makes it sound like it\u2019s a terrible thing when actually, it\u2019s just the opposite. We want people that will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, not people that are trying to destroy our Country, that were put in by Obama and Biden and, in many cases, they shouldn\u2019t have been representing the U.S.A. in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a lot to work with here. And, to be clear , noting that \u201cmany of them didn\u2019t leave, but were fired\u201d is the opposite of a flex. Like, we *know* the purge<\/a> is on in the federal government and it\u2019s actually deeply disturbing. Also undermining Trump\u2019s argument that the legal talent exodus is a good thing is the $25,000 the DOJ is offering to get anyone at all to take the jobs these alleged saboteurs left behind.<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly: the president of the United States just confirmed the core premise of the Harvard professor\u2019s concern. If the president himself is saying that people who work for this DOJ are people he actively selected for loyalty over competence, then Professor Mergen\u2019s observation that a DOJ r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is now a trust problem isn\u2019t a liberal talking point. It\u2019s a straightforward inference from the president\u2019s own account of his own personnel decisions.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times dropped a big one on Sunday. After months of anecdotal reporting \u2014 emergency jump teams, \u201cforward this to a friend\u201d recruiting emails, $25,000 signing bonuses, DRAFT watermarks on filed motions \u2014 the paper put hard federal employment data behind what everyone in the legal world already knew was happening. Trump\u2019s upheaval […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":153469,"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-153468","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\/2026\/06\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-FagojS.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153468","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=153468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}