Rachel Cohen: My Big Law Employer Refused to Stand Up to Trump – So I Quit
By Rachel Cohen
On March 20, 2025, I quit my job as a finance associate at Skadden Arps in response to the legal community’s failure to stand firm against President Trump’s attacks on law firms and the legal system broadly. As you may now know, shortly after taking office, President Trump launched an unprecedented and ongoing campaign to silence and co-opt the nation’s largest and most powerful law firms. He has issued Executive Orders targeting firms, threatening their security clearances, banning their lawyers from federal buildings, and threatening to strip federal funds from their clients. He has also launched investigations targeting their hiring practices. This is an assault on the very idea of an independent legal system.
And the President’s attacks have been effective. Even as some law firms have decided to fight back and won court orders supporting their causes, many of the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms have folded. Firms like Skadden, where partners make millions of dollars a year, have instead opted to cut deals with the President, offering in excess of $100 million of free legal services to causes favored by Trump and his allies. In exchange, the President has promised to go easy on them, at least for now. Indeed, shortly after I resigned, Skadden Arps itself entered into such a settlement with Trump. While I cannot say I am happy to be unemployed, this decision confirmed everything I feared about my former employer.
To be honest, I would forgive you for wondering why, given everything going on, you should care about attacks on law firms. I personally never envisioned myself quitting my job, going on national television, and testifying before Congress in support of the rights of some of the most powerful lawyers in the country. After all, most of these firms primarily serve large corporate clients and have enormous resources at their disposal. So why did I choose this fight?
What is so frightening is how the capitulation of these law firms shows us we are not taking the threat posed by the Trump administration seriously enough. These law firms should, perhaps more so than anyone else in the country, be willing and able to stand up for their constitutional rights. The fact that, instead of fighting, they are choosing to align themselves with Trump tells us something important: after all, if the nation’s most powerful lawyers will not stand up for legal process, who will?
This is not an abstract issue. In just the past few days, we have seen President Trump openly flouting the rule of law by refusing to order the return of a man illegally deported to one of the most feared prisons in the world in El Salvador. Horrible as the deportation may be on its own, the fact that the Trump administration is refusing to comply with a judge’s order threatens something very fundamental in American life. A President who refuses to acknowledge the power of courts to limit his power has no limits on his power. This is true whether he is pursuing mass deportations, unilaterally dismantling the Department of Education or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or, when the time comes, targeting our electoral system. We are in a constitutional crisis, and even people who should realize that, such as the lawyers at these major law firms, are going about as if it is business as usual.
Like many people, I see many of these events through my own political values. I cannot help it. I worry about how the President’s lawlessness will disproportionately impact immigrants, people of color, and others. However, the danger posed by President Trump is not a partisan issue. Legal process is the bedrock of our constitutional system because it binds all of us: Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and anyone else. No one can afford to ignore this danger. Due process rights cannot be contingent on changes in administration. If they are, there very well might not be future changes in administration.
We cannot be complacent. We are currently living through a time when the future is being written in front of our eyes, and there is massive uncertainty about what type of future is going to emerge. It is time now to organize within your communities and your workplaces, to unite, not only like-minded people but with people who, though you may disagree on many issues, agree that what is happening in Washington right now is beyond the pale.
We simply must do more to raise the alarm. Every day, we move further down the path toward an authoritarian future that we will not recognize. It is up to all of us to see this moment for what it is and to fight like the future depends on it.
Rachel Cohen is an attorney and graduate of Harvard Law School (JD 2022) and The Ohio State University (BA 2014). She lives in Chicago.
