Trump Deals For Biglaw Are A Data Point—But Not Destiny
Settling firms have experienced steeper drops in lawyer headcount than fighting firms—but the overall picture is more complicated and nuanced.
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A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. The footnotes, which contain material that did not appear in the Bloomberg Law version of the piece, are a form of “bonus content” for Original Jurisdiction subscribers.
In late February, the Trump administration began targeting large law firms with executive orders (EOs) and memoranda. Four firms fought the EOs in court—so far, successfully. Nine firms reached settlements, in which they promised to provide a total of $940 million in pro bono legal services to support causes favored by the administration (among other undertakings).
Roughly six months have passed since these executive actions, the filing of lawsuits, and the cutting of deals.1 How have firms’ divergent responses affected their headcount? Did lawyers depart from dealmaking firms and flock to fighting firms, troubled by how the settling firms “caved” or “capitulated” to Trump? Or did partners instead leave the litigating firms for platforms perceived as “safer” for their practices?
A number of lawyers who moved in the wake of the orders generated headlines. Some associates made “noisy withdrawals” from settling firms—like Rachel Cohen, who quit Skadden Arps in April. Some partners lateraled from firms that cut deals to firms that are taking on Trump—like the seven partners who left Willkie Farr for Cooley, which represents Jenner & Block in that firm’s fight against its EO. And some partners left settling firms to launch their own boutiques—like the four prominent litigators who left Paul Weiss to start Dunn Isaacson Rhee.
But these reports are anecdotal in nature. I wanted big-picture data—and I received it, courtesy of SurePoint Legal Insights. Formerly Leopard Solutions, SurePoint Legal Insights tracks 6,000 law firms and provides insights on legal-industry hiring trends.
I asked SurePoint to track the changes in lawyer headcount, from March 1 through September 8, in the U.S. offices of 14 firms affected by Trump’s moves against Biglaw: the nine settling firms, the four fighting firms, and Covington & Burling (which was subjected to an executive memorandum but neither sued nor settled).2 Here’s what SurePoint found:
(Note that the changes to associate and partner headcount include what SurePoint calls “internal” moves—such as an associate’s promotion to partner, or a partner’s move to counsel—and the total headcount change includes changes to the ranks of counsel as well as associates and partners.)
What should we make of this data? Craig Savitzky, manager of research and insights at SurePoint, shared some thoughts with me.
“Headcount trends since March reveal a stark divide in how firms subjected to the Trump EOs have fared,” he wrote by email. “On average, Am Law 100 firms saw modest attrition of just -15 lawyers, or -1.7 percent. By contrast, several of the firms that chose to settle—such as A&O Shearman (-10 percent) and Cadwalader (-11 percent)—experienced some of the steepest declines in the group.”
“Firms actively fighting the EOs, like Jenner & Block (0 percent) and Perkins Coie (-8 percent), generally posted mixed results, while Covington, which took no action against the memo, effectively broke even,” he continued. “The data suggests that firms’ strategic choices in response to the EOs have coincided with significantly different patterns of retention, with some settlements correlating with sharper-than-average losses.”
The five firms Trump targeted that didn’t cut deals notched a 2.8 percent decline in lawyer headcount, on average. The nine firms that cut deals with the administration suffered a 4.9 percent average dip in their attorney ranks—so the settling firms’ average attrition rate was 75 percent larger than that of the fighting firms.
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But note Savitzky’s careful wording: firms’ responses have “coincided” or “correlated” with headcount changes. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, so we can’t definitively declare that a firm’s Trump deal triggered the decline in its ranks.3
Take A&O Shearman. Although its 10 percent headcount dip is striking, we can’t conclude that it resulted from its Trump settlement. While a group of A&O Shearman associates wrote a letter to leadership condemning the firm’s Trump settlement, opining “that agreements of this nature contribute to the degradation of the rule of law in the United States,” we don’t know how much (if any) attorney attrition can be chalked up to deal dissatisfaction.
It’s also important to remember something I learned during my detour into legal recruiting: individual lawyers make career decisions for multiple reasons. These might include a firm’s culture or values, but they could also encompass client conflicts, financial factors, geographical considerations, and more. And some attorneys, of course, are asked to leave by their firms.
So while some lawyers might have left A&O Shearman because of its Trump settlement, others might have left because of, say, the 2024 merger of Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling that created the firm. Partner departures are common both ahead of and after law firm mergers, as noted by Kent Zimmermann of the Zeughauser Group consultancy, as partners pick the best platforms for their practices—or post-merger firms show certain partners the door. (In September 2024, A&O Shearman announced that it would be intentionally cutting global partner count by 10 percent, which global managing partner Hervé Ekué described as a “difficult but necessary step forward.”)4
Or take the partners who have left Paul Weiss after its controversial settlement, which was criticized by firm alumni and by Amy and Nina Rifkind, the granddaughters of name partner Simon Rifkind. Some Paul Weiss partners might have departed over the deal—possibly former U.S. attorney Damian Williams (S.D.N.Y.), who left to join Jenner & Block, a fighting firm that Williams pointedly praised for “liv[ing] its values.”
But what about the partners who left Paul Weiss for the Dunn Isaacson Rhee boutique? Some of these partners—not just the four founding partners, but other partners who moved later—might have been unhappy with the deal. But some might have moved because of Paul Weiss’s increased emphasis on its transactional practice over litigation or based on the benefits of boutiques over Biglaw (such as fewer client conflicts, more autonomy, and a smaller, potentially more collegial work environment).
We can, however, make more modest claims based on the data. Firms that cut deals can still grow—such as the only two firms in the cohort of 14 that increased headcount over the relevant period, Milbank and Simpson Thacher, which expanded by 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively. And firms that are fighting the EOs can still shrink—like Perkins Coie, whose headcount declined by 8 percent.
Put another way, the Trump deals might be affecting, but not fundamentally altering, law firms’ overall trajectories. Milbank, for example, grew its profits per equity partner by an astounding 33 percent in 2024, according to The American Lawyer—landing the firm in the top 10 based on this metric. It invested some of its wealth in expansion, poaching partners from rival firms and hiring out of government.
Last month, Milbank announced midyear bonuses for its associates—the first (and so far only) Biglaw firm to do so. Although it’s possible that the firm’s settlement might have hurt it in some respects, Milbank’s future appears bright. And notwithstanding its deal, Milbank is still willing to oppose the Trump administration—reflected in partners Neal Katyal and Gurbir Grewal taking on the Justice Department in “sanctuary city” litigation, or Katyal litigating against Trump tariffs.
At the end of the day, here’s my cautious conclusion: for Biglaw, the Trump deals are a data point—but not destiny.
Note my intentional use of the term “executive actions,” a broader term than “executive orders.” Covington & Burling was on the receiving end of an executive memorandum, while five other firms—Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey—got hit with EOs. (The Paul Weiss EO was officially revoked after that firm’s settlement with the Trump administration.)
This analysis is limited to lawyer headcount, and it doesn’t include departures by other legal professionals. This reflects a limitation of the available data: the services that track employment at large law firms focus on lawyers, and I’m not aware of any service that covers the moves of allied legal professionals in a comprehensive and systematic way (i.e., looking beyond C-suite or senior business professionals at firms). But it should be noted that allied legal professionals constitute a sizable percentage of overall Biglaw employees—and many of them were deeply troubled by law firms’ settlements with the Trump administration.
Here’s another important caveat, which applies to partner moves: although six months is a decent stretch of time, we might see even more partner departures from settling firms later this year or early next year. As I know from my time as a legal recruiter, partner moves can take a long time to plan and execute. In the words of noted technology litigator Neel Chatterjee (who moved earlier this year from Goodwin to King & Spalding), if you’re a partner thinking about lateraling, “it takes time to do it. If you want to go to another law firm—and I’ve recruited a lot of people to my two law firms—it can take months, if not years, to work through conflicts issues, to deal with the issues affecting service to the client, and all of that.”
Also, keep in mind that Biglaw partner pay tends to be back-loaded. Typically partners receive (relatively modest) “draws,” which are essentially advances against profits, on a regular schedule—e.g., semi-monthly, monthly, or quarterly—and then, as firms ramp up their collections near the end of the year, partners receive (much larger) lump-sum distributions, which might hit bank accounts in December or early in the new year. So it could be the case that some partners at settling firms are unhappy about their firms’ deals, but are waiting to make their moves for financial reasons.
Although A&O Shearman’s planned reduction in partner ranks was announced in September 2024, we don’t know when it took effect. It’s possible that some of the partner cuts fell during the covered period—but it’s also possible that if they were announced in September 2024, they were completed by March 2025, the start of the period at issue here. Also, A&O Shearman’s announcement from last September didn’t discuss associate headcount, which dipped by 10 percent over the six-month period covered by the survey.
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Good analysis.
I'd say the herd of cats comprising BigLaw continue to be mostly unherdable. One really needs to pay attention to the cats individually, and resist the temptation to describe what the herd is doing.
Interesting! Are there any assessments of internal quality? GPA of summer associates, etc? Are there potentially non-headcount erosions?