Judicial Notice (03.30.25): Trump v. Biglaw
Scuttlebutt about Skadden, courage from Cooley and Clement, more associates taking a stand, and three extremely busy judges.
Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here.
Last week was hectic for me. On Tuesday, I attended ALM’s Legalweek, the big legal-tech conference, and on Thursday, I moderated an excellent panel about AI and the legal profession, hosted by Boies Schiller Flexner and LexFusion. On top of those previously planned events, I spent an inordinate amount of time following and writing about Donald Trump’s ongoing battle with Biglaw—which I discussed with fellow journalists, including Aysha Bagchi of USA Today and Laura Jarrett of NBC Nightly News (at 13:24—don’t blink or you’ll miss me).
Now, on to the news.
Lawyers of the Week: Michael Attanasio, Paul Clement, and their colleagues at Cooley and Clement & Murphy who are fighting the Trump executive orders.
In the past week, two Am Law 100 firms got hit with Trump administration executive orders (EOs). On Tuesday, March 25, Jenner & Block got “EO’d,” to use the new verb I’ve coined, and WilmerHale was EO’d two days later, on March 27.
Neither firm wasted any time in getting to court. On March 28, both Jenner and Wilmer sued a slew of federal agencies and officials in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.D.C.), challenging the constitutionality of the orders against them. I discuss their cases under Litigations of the Week, infra.
For now, I’d like to highlight the lawyers and law firms that stepped up to the plate to represent Jenner and WilmerHale. Jenner retained Cooley, a fellow Am Law 100 firm, which fielded a team including Michael Attanasio, David Mills, Kristine Forderer, and John Bostic. Based out of San Diego, Attanasio is a leading commercial litigator and former global chair of Cooley’s litigation department. Prior to joining Cooley, he served for nearly a decade at the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). (For more detailed profiles of all four Cooley lawyers, see Law360.)
WilmerHale’s lead lawyer needs no introduction to readers of Original Jurisdiction: Paul Clement, described by Bloomberg Law as “a LeBron James of lawyers.” A former U.S. solicitor general under George W. Bush, Clement is regarded by many as the nation’s preeminent Supreme Court and appellate advocate. And he’s also a prominent conservative lawyer, with wins in landmark cases like Bruen and Loper Bright to his name. Working with him on the Wilmer case is Erin Murphy—the other name partner at Clement & Murphy, as well as a fellow former SCOTUS clerk and alum of the U.S. solicitor general’s office.
Paul Clement is a perfect pick for this matter for yet another reason: he’s a leading defender of the adversarial system and the notion that lawyers should not be punished for representing disfavored clients or causes (as he discussed with me on the OJ podcast). This is a topic he has firsthand experience with, having been pushed out of two Biglaw firms because he was representing unpopular (conservative) causes: defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which led to his departure from King & Spalding in 2011, and advocating for Second Amendment rights, which triggered his leaving Kirkland & Ellis in 2022. So as Ed Whelan put it, Paul Clement is now “demonstrat[ing] his courage and integrity by standing up for Biglaw—even though Biglaw didn’t have the courage and integrity to stand up for him.”
Cooley and Clement & Murphy quickly secured excellent results for their clients. They filed their complaints and sought temporary restraining orders (TROs) to block the executive orders on Friday, March 28, and judges issued TROs that same day. Jenner’s TRO was issued by Judge John Bates, while Wilmer’s TRO was issued by Judge Richard Leon. So Trump administration EOs aimed at large law firms have now been blocked by three ideologically diverse judges: two Bush appointees, the moderate Judge Bates and the conservative Judge Leon, and one Obama appointee, the liberal Judge Beryl Howell (who issued the TRO in the Perkins Coie case).
Congratulations to Mike Attanasio and Cooley and Paul Clement and Clement & Murphy on Friday’s wins. And thanks to them for taking on these cases and standing up for the rule of law.
Other lawyers in the news:
Rachel Cohen of Skadden and Ramon Ryan of Orrick aren’t the only Biglaw associates who are speaking out about recent events. Brenna Frey followed in Cohen’s footsteps by resigning from Skadden—and announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, which promptly went viral. Gilbert Orbea, on his last day at WilmerHale, sent a firmwide email urging his colleagues to “fight back” and “speak up,” also posting his message on LinkedIn (via Anna Bower of Lawfare). He left Wilmer before it got EO’d; he later described himself as “beyond proud of Jenner and Wilmer for standing up to these unconstitutional executive orders.”
Former Supreme Court advocate and SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein did not succeed in challenging the pretrial release condition subjecting his electronic devices and internet use to monitoring. His federal criminal trial is currently scheduled to start on January 12, 2026, per Howard Bashman of How Appealing.
Speaking of prominent practitioners in pickles, Texas IP litigator William P. Ramey III got sanctioned by three different courts in one week. Congratulations to Bill Ramey on the sanctions “hat trick”?
Actual congratulations to Lauren Krasnoff and David Oscar Markus of Markus/Moss and Andrew Feldman and Kyra Harkins of the Feldman Law Firm. After nearly four weeks of trial in federal court (S.D. Fla.), they secured an across-the-board acquittal of their clients, Diego Sanchez and Milo Caskey, in a case involving allegations of a $36 million healthcare fraud.
Kudos also to Trent McCotter of Boyden Gray PLLC, who last Wednesday made his Supreme Court debut in FCC v. Consumers’ Research, a buzz-generating case out of the Fifth Circuit about the nondelegation doctrine. It camr eight years after he narrowly missed out on the chance to argue before SCOTUS—an interesting story recounted by Kimberly Robinson of Bloomberg Law.
And good luck to Peter Bruland, 33, who this Monday will be the first associate from Sidley Austin to argue before the Supreme Court. He represents Danny Rivers in Rivers v. Guerrero, concerning the ability of inmates to amend their habeas filings.
In an update on the tragic passing of former U.S. attorney Jessica Aber (E.D. Va.), 43, her family informed ABC News that she suffered from epilepsy for many years and passed away in her sleep. People who suffer from epilepsy sometimes die suddenly, often in their sleep, and there is a clinical term for it: “Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy” (SUDEP).
Judges of the Week: Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia Millett, and Justin Walker.
Are you feeling overwhelmed and overworked right now? Imagine how D.C. Circuit Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia Millett, and Justin Walker must feel right now (to say nothing of their poor clerks).
If you’ve been thinking that this trio has been getting a disproportionate share of big-ticket Trump cases, it’s not your imagination. Many cases against the Trump administration get filed in the D.D.C., the appeals they generate go to the D.C. Circuit, and litigants who have sought emergency relief from the D.C. Circuit in the past few weeks have found their cases before these three judges because they happen to be the current “special panel.”
What’s a “special panel”? They’re three randomly chosen judges who sit for a set period of time, hearing all emergency motions and handling certain other matters, as provided for by the D.C. Circuit’s internal procedures. They’re the D.C. Circuit version of what many other circuits call a “motions panel.”
Here are a few of the high-profile, high-stakes cases that Judges Henderson, Millett, and Walker have had to resolve:
Dellinger v. Bessent (March 10). The panel unanimously granted emergency relief to the Trump administration and allowed it to proceed with the removal of Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel.
J.G.G. v. Trump (March 26). This is the case about the government’s effort to remove hundreds of Venezuelan nationals, based on the Alien Enemies Act, and fly them to El Salvador. It’s currently being overseen by Chief Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg—who on Monday denied the administration’s motion to vacate his TROs—and in the D.C. Circuit, the panel denied emergency relief to the Trump administration as well. Judges Henderson and Millett formed the majority, Judge Walker dissented, and they issued 93 pages of opinions—two days after oral argument. The administration is now seeking emergency relief from SCOTUS.
Harris v. Bessent (March 28). The panel granted emergency relief to the Trump administration and let it fire Cathy Harris, of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne Wilcox, of the National Labor Relations Board. Judges Henderson and Walker formed the majority, Judge Millett dissented, and they issued 114 pages of opinions—10 days after oral argument.
Can you imagine issuing 100 or more pages of opinions, in cases receiving national attention, mere days after oral argument? I take my hat off to Judges Henderson, Millett, and Walker, and I thank them—and their sleep-deprived clerks—for discharging their duties so diligently. Whether you agree or disagree with any particular decision, their service on the special panel is yet another example of how well the judiciary is holding up, during difficult and demanding times. And I give special props to Judge Henderson, still an active-status judge at 80—one of around two dozen Republican-appointed circuit judges who are eligible to take senior status.
In other news about judges and the judiciary:
Next month marks Justice Neil Gorsuch’s eighth anniversary on the Supreme Court—and the past week or so has been one of the most revealing of his tenure, as Sarah Isgur argued on Advisory Opinions (AO). He parted ways with his two fellow Horsemen of the Right-Wing Apocalypse, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and wrote the Court’s opinion in Bondi v. VanDerStok, upholding the federal government’s ability to regulate “ghost guns” (discussed below as Ruling of the Week). He filed a dissent in Delligatti v. United States that reflected his solicitude for the rights of criminal defendants—and was joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who shares his due-process concerns. But he parted ways with Justice Jackson and was the only member of the Court to dissent from her opinion in United States v. Miller, a bankruptcy case, and he also filed a solo dissent from the denial of certiorari in Hoffman v. Westcott, expressing openness to a death-row inmate’s religious-freedom claim—a reflection of his libertarian sensibilities. Say what you will about Justice Gorsuch, but there’s no denying that he’s one of the most interesting and independent members of the Court.
In a wide-ranging interview at Georgetown Law with Dean Bill Treanor, Justice Sonia Sotomayor defended judicial independence and condemned the unfairness of arbitrary power. She didn’t name names—but did she have to?
Former Fourth Circuit judge J. Michael Luttig wasn’t afraid to name names, in a Times op-ed: It’s Trump vs. the Courts, and It Won’t End Well for Trump (gift link).
Judicial independence is being threatened by threats—literal threats of physical violence, against both judges and their loved ones. So I was sadly unsurprised to learn about the federal judiciary’s new Judicial Security and Independence Task Force, which will hold its first meeting next month.
Bankruptcy Judge Kesha Tanabe (D. Minn.) is resigning—”allegedly amid serious misconduct allegations,” according to Aliza Shatzman of the Legal Accountability Project, writing for Above the Law.
In neighboring Wisconsin, Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has raised $24 million for the April 1 election—a record for an American judicial candidate. The race between Judge Crawford and Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate supported by millions in spending from super PACs affiliated with Elon Musk, is already the most expensive judicial race in American history—with estimated spending of $90 million so far.
In memoriam: Judge Michael Boudin, who served on the First Circuit from 1992 to 2021, passed away at 85. As I told Emily Langer of The Washington Post (gift link), he was “one of the leading lights of the federal judiciary, universally regarded as brilliant—even by people who were themselves regarded as brilliant—and very much a judge who applied and followed the law, no matter where it took him.” May he rest in peace.
Job of the Week: an opportunity for a corporate associate in Chicago.
Lateral Link is spearheading an unposted search for an Am Law firm seeking a corporate associate to join its Chambers-recognized team. The firm seeks an attorney with 1-4 years of M&A/private-equity experience from a large firm. This is an outstanding opportunity to join a thriving practice in a firm with a collegial, entrepreneurial culture, in the great city of Chicago. Partners are deeply committed to mentoring and developing associates on their path to partnership. For immediate consideration, please email your résumé to Ashleigh Goldberg at agoldberg@laterallink.com.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Original Jurisdiction to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.