Andrew Silberstein: We Will Not Be “Cogs” in The Big Law Machine as They Bend to Trump
By Andrew Silberstein
I used the moniker cog to describe myself when quitting my associate position at Willkie Farr & Gallagher last month because it is exactly what Big Law firms’ executive committees would have us believe. It is exactly what this administration would have us believe. Cogs born to toil at the behest of institutions that censor and make promises they will not keep.
My resignation email, which criticized Willkie Farr’s settlement with the Trump administration as lacking courage or principle and was sent to over 250 people firmwide, was censored. Not for its language, but for its topic. The same goes for most of my fellow resignees. Capitulating firms will say that this is not the appropriate forum to send such a message. But make no mistake: that is only because they do not want their employees to have a forum to speak openly on this issue. Across each capitulating firm, that message has been clear. Another firm, Skadden Arps, cancelled all its affinity group meetings for the remainder of the year, eliminating the only institutionalized forums for associates and partners to discuss the settlements and coalesce around a strategy to combat them. For their censorships, Skadden faces a lawsuit from the NLRB.
These firms, which are private institutions of inexhaustible resources and vast personnel, ought to be best positioned to protest the overreach of power. Instead, in the name of self-preservation, they have chosen censorship and capitulation, contorting their principles so drastically that they brush aside the foundational premise of their and every legal institution’s existence: the import of law. They stand, behemoths, glowering monuments to a broken capitalism, having forgotten the premise upon which they were formed. Thankfully, there are firms like Perkins Coie that do not pay mere lip service to principle, and for their courage, they were rewarded. There is still time for capitulating firms to reverse course. But if these institutions choose not to fight, then who?
It will have to be us. Cogs who are not in the position to make decisions so grand that they affect the lives of thousands and ripple into the stability of America’s most fundamental institutions. Associates, law students, clients, partners, law schools need to step up – but others as well, because standing up to these perversions of the law will take Americans writ large. We need concerted collective action to combat the assault on the rule of law and American democracy.
The Trump administration toys with a Supreme Court directive to bring Abrego Garcia home, it stonewalls district courts, it claims due process is dispensable, and that it doesn’t know whether it must uphold the constitution. All of this is in concert, and all of it is concerted. It is not about Democrat vs. Republican, it is not about Making America Great Again – this is an authoritarian playbook played out through history. It is about uprooting the legitimacy and credibility of the rule of law, crippling courts and formidable legal institutions so as to plunge the nation into pseudolegality, reigned by lawlessness and governed solely by one man.
Associates and law students must organize internally and take action (see Associate Toolkit; Law Student Toolkit), sign petitions with their names, and refuse the impending influx of pro bono focused on Cops and Coal (industries and individuals who already have legal representation). Partners must continue to join the ranks of organizations like Law Firm Partners United and look to take their book of business to firms that did not surrender. Clients must follow Microsoft’s lead and take their business to firms that support the rule of law.
It will take activism from lawyers and nonlawyers alike. It will take the millions of us who, unlike the members of capitulating executive committees, have not forgotten history, and that acquiescence to power is a losing proposition. We know that these capitulations will save the firms from absolutely nothing, that this administration will only release them when it sees fit. We will not be silent. There may be a cost to action – I and several other people who quit our jobs at firms that bent to Trump in protest certainly know that – but the cost of inaction is everything. I urge other cogs like me, lawyer or not, to take action. Make your voices heard.
Andrew Silberstein is an attorney and graduate of the University of Texas School of Law (JD 2020) and Wake Forest University (BS 2017). He lives in New York City.
