Furor over Trump's targeting of law firms heats up with court fight and ad campaign
Source: NBC News
April 24, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
WASHINGTON — A liberal group will launch a media campaign Thursday targeting law firms that reached deals with President Donald Trump to avoid being targeted by executive orders as the deals come under intense scrutiny within the legal community and Trump's orders face legal inquiries.
"Big law, stop bending the knee," reads a poster from the "Big Law Cowards" campaign by the liberal nonprofit group Demand Justice. The group says the ads will be wheatpasted strategically around Washington on Thursday near the locations of the firms that have reached deals with the administration. The group will also have a mobile billboard circulating with ads criticizing the firms, along with a broader digital campaign.
The judicial branch is pushing back against other executive orders targeting firms that didn’t reach deals with the Trump administration — and the firms that did make deals are managing both internal and external fallout from their decisions. At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell grilled Justice Department lawyer Richard Lawson about the executive order against Perkins Coie, one of the law firms that refused to reach a deal with the Trump administration and sued it, instead.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, the interim executive director of Demand Justice, told NBC News that her group hoped to highlight the need for the powerful to act in support of the values of the legal profession, defend the rule of law and support American values. “When you see some of the most powerful law firms in the country, if not the world, unwilling to stand up to the administration when ordinary people are speaking out, we think it’s really important to shine a bright light on that and really show that ordinary people demand that those most powerful speak out against the administration and not bend the knee,” she said.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/furor-trumps-targeting-law-firms-heats-court-fight-ad-campaign-rcna202570
Link to Demand Justice PRESS RELEASE - Demand Justice Launches New “Big Law Cowards” Campaign Urging Nation’s Most Powerful Law Firms To Stop Capitulating To Trump
Link to Demand Justice "Biglawcowards" site - https://demandjustice.org/priorities/biglawcowards/