When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/db7398780c791ef4

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems.
They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet
When it comes to their own wealth.
Most are running a disconnected stack.
A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.
Creative planning was built to fix exactly that.
One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together.
Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof.
Creative planning where wealth works together.
Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.
Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit.
This may be our biggest stage yet.
Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more.
Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great,
We want you there with us too.
Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six.
That's mastersofscom slash apply.
Twenty six.
Ha ha ha.
Hi, everyone, we have a special episode today about the world's biggest law firms, which people don't always think about as businesses.
But they have tremendous economic weight. As advisors to the most significant companies and organizations in the world, their business choices have a ripple effect across the economy. Some of these prominent law firms have recently found themselves in President Trump's crosshairs.
My guest today is Rachel Cohen, a young attorney who tried to get her firm, the prestigious and lucrative Scad and ARPS, to fight the administration's efforts, only to have her attempts rebuffed and to be effectively forced out of the firm.
Rachel's story is full of drama, frustration, and fears about how the rule of law is changing in America. It's a story of how uncertainty is impacting even the most successful businesses, and it raises questions about the legal industry's role in the checks and balances of the US system.
For any business, it provides a window into the leadership challenges of this wider moment. I'm Bob Safian.
And this
Із рапід респанс.

I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Rachel Cohen. Rachel, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Bob.
So you are a Harvard educated attorney.
You landed a position at one of the most high profile, most successful, most lucrative law firms in the world, Scadden ARPS.
But just recently you quit.
In protest over a deal the firm made with the Trump administration. Can you take us through how?
All this
Unfolded.
It started with an anonymous effort by young lawyers at the firm. Can you tell us the story?
I'd love to.
And uh
Just two quick things, Harvard and Ohio State educated, go bucks, but I um
Scottin is very prestigious and it's lucrative and all of these things.
I also love my coworkers.
And that made it harder to walk away than any of the prestige or anything else. They're really great people, and I actually think that that's

kind of capitulation to Trump, but let's jump back.
To uh
What feels like a lifetime ago, but was actually less than a month ago when the Perkins executive order, which was an executive order entered by Donald Trump targeting Perkins Coue, a large corporate law firm, was entered on March sixth.
That executive order targeted Perkins Coe.
And and stripped them of security clearances, which are necessary for certain kinds of governmental work.
And strip them of government contracts and also put pressure on third parties to disclose if they did business with Perkins Cooey, so that if the government contracted with those third parties, they could reevaluate those contracts. And if you read the executive order all the way through.
Which a lot of attorneys, especially at large corporate law firms, did not have time to do.
Even though it's two pages long.
There's
A roadmap.
laid out by the president that he is going to come after additional corporate law firms and that he's going to do it under the guise of
Kind of.
Anti DEI quote unquote
Equity
Pushback the way that that the current administration views inclusion efforts as
You know
Outside of of
Title Seven of the Civil Rights Act and claims that they're racial preference.
Which
Having just worked at one of these firms
It's a little ironic to walk through the halls and think we have glass office doors so you can see everybody.
And
To allege that there's any kind of anti white bias in hiring in big law firms.
It is a tough
Tough thing to pitch. Equity partnerships are still, I believe.
Eighty eight percent white.
uh nationwide and so
Just as a quick aside.
These firms
Across the board.
Had diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Aimed at combating that. And so because of it, it gave the Trump administration a backdoor into
Attacking
Any law firm that he wanted on these grounds.
You're at Skaden when all of this is starting to come down towards
Perkins cooie, which is not
You're firm. You're not
Working with them. So w why does it become something that you
Get involved with.
Because I read the executive order all the way through and I saw that he was going to come for other firms.
And then there was another executive action the following day that was aimed at public service loan forgiveness, which is a program that a lot of public interest attorneys use.
It listed things like immigration representation.
It listed things like
Defending people who block highways, which is, you know, a thinly veiled way at getting to to free speech.
And the combination of those two things made it very clear to me that this was the beginning of a broad scale assault on the legal profession, especially because the president had.
Put out a fact sheet the week prior targeting Covington and Burling, not an executive order, but kind of the same thing.
Trying to punish people for doing past representation.
And nobody had said anything.
At that point I reached out internally to people that I trusted and said
I just want to make sure that we're paying attention to this people in management.
D you read it, right? You saw that he outlined that he's coming for additional corporate law firms.
I assume that there's some kind of industry wide response.
And I would like to know how I can be helpful there.
If we're not organizing around some type of collective response to stand up for lawyers' rights to represent
Whatever client they choose to represent and not have those views imputed to them.
That's a foundation of the American legal system.
And we're really powerful within that system and we should be doing something to defend it.
So
They don't respond.
And
you then take it upon yourself to do what?
I must give credit where it's due. I got one response that was, Thanks, Rachel. Always appreciate your perspective. The email I had sent, literally, Bob, was like,
The sky is falling.
This is the beginning of autocracy.
Thanks, Rachel. Always appreciate your perspective.
And so in the background, I and a couple of friends are working on a plan B.
We are looking at the problem of everybody knows that this is happening.
Big Law has a huge collective action problem. People are terrified of losing their jobs because there are not a lot of jobs that pay.
starting over$200,000 a year. And so if you've planned your financial future around that kind of income.
Even if you leave your firm, it's very important to not be blacklisted within the industry.
And so
How do we take
These risk averse attorneys.
And get them motivated to take any kind of collective action.
And what we came up with was this kind of anonymized
Letter.
So we write this open letter that's very focused on rule of law concerns.
The first one hundred signatories were only word of mouth.
We had some phone trees going, people signed on. So we knew that all 100 of those people, even though I don't know who all of them are.
They are all
Who they say they are.
As soon as it went live, I posted it on LinkedIn in full and identified myself as a signatory.
And was very proud of that judgment call because as soon as we posted it on Reddit, someone responded and said
I don't know the value of something that you're not putting your name on and I s
responded in that comment with a link to my LinkedIn post and said, My name's on it.
Mm-hmm.
So we're circulating that. It's getting hundreds of signatories, but it's very nonconfrontational. I'm doing
Some media around it. No one's really sure within the firm how to proceed. It was a a very weird week of going into work.
Uh because the people you work with know that you're the one'cause you're the one whose name is on this. And does this make the firm more likely to be a target of the administration, then?
It was a question that I asked myself.
Because
The initial Perkins Cui executive order said
We are looking at fifteen to twenty other law firms.
And
Not to sound like a scadden attorney, but
Sorry, if you're looking at big representative law firms in the country that are known for public interest work or pro bono work, rather.
You're looking at scadden ARP. I don't think there was any way to avoid that.
And so
The the acting commissioner of the EOC, Andrea Lucas, sends out
Twenty EEOC demand letters.
That request
Personal information.
Uh
Applicants to the firm for the last m over five years. And we're one of the firms that received that letter. I find it highly unlikely that any of the organizing that I and my friends were doing influencing that. All of a sudden.
It's gone from these kind of real but
Esoteric rule of law concerns.
Two concerns about
Are you going to give the Trump administration my cell phone number?
Especially when these EOC demand letters
Request that information in a way that really zeroes in on people who applied through diversity fellowships or something called the SEO fellowship, which was historically open to people from marginalized backgrounds.
So the EOC is asking these law firms for names, email and phone number, contact.
for anyone who's applied to these programs and anyone who's been hire.
Yep, in a searchable spread sheet that includes their race.
It asks for email address, phone number, race, law school GPA, and it asks for it in a searchable PDF.
And the first thing I'll name
If you're listening to this and can't see me and haven't seen me, I'm a white woman. My mind didn't jump here immediately.
But
Several of my friends who are not white.
Their minds immediately go to being doxxed.
And that the Trump administration is going to post their information.
On the internet, especially people who maybe their grades were a little bit lower than
White peers that they
got hired over, and it's gonna be alleged that that's why, as opposed to the fact that
These firms
Interview for fit.
And not just off GPA and numbers.
And that's immediately where their minds went.
And once they pointed it out to me, I realized that of course I thought that they were right. That was very
On brand for the Trump administration to do.
I also think it's important to name that as these letters go out.
Former commissioners of the EEOC issue a letter saying that
They are unenforceable and likely illegally delivered because they did not follow proper process within the EEOC.
Everyone's so busy that people don't read this letter. I didn't read that letter. People
In the firm did not read that letter. And so
We're emailing
Asking for meetings with management, they're providing them.
We're going into these meetings and management is telling us
That the demand letters are very complicated.
That they're not employment lawyers, they don't know what the law is, they don't know what the obligations are.
And so it's scading that the
The top lawyers in the world and they can't figure out the legal situation. And I guess you it's not just at Scottin.
And Bob, they are ten.
Pages long.
It's insane.
And so we're having these meetings.
Paul Weiss has this executive order leveraged against it. We're meeting not just on the EEOC demand letters, but pressuring trying to get firms to collectively support Perkins.
We're sending these emails, we're getting very unsatisfying responses.
And then Paul Weiss announces that they have made a deal with the Trump administration to get him to withdraw his executive order against them, despite the fact that Perkins is fighting their executive order. They've won this temporary restraining order. And in just as an aside, on any other timeline with any other president.
You wouldn't.
Issue an identical executive order.
Over
A temporary restraining order in functionally enjoining
Another executive order that looks exactly the same way. It's almost
Intentional to see what
The system will bear.
There's an order that order is deemed to be
Not legal.
And then essentially the same order is issued again.
to another firm.
Yes, it's like he puts on those fake glasses with like the nose and mustache.
And sends the exact same guy back in who's just been kicked out of the bar.
And so
Paul Wise enters this deal.
What did Paul Weiss agree to? Just so everyone
Is is caught up.
Among other things, they agreed to provide forty million dollars in pro bono legal services to the Trump administration. To the Trump administration directly?
Yes.
Or it's the Trump administration interests.
Is Paul Weiss about to show up?
Arguing why Mahmoud Khalil should be in indefinite ICE detention because he attended a protest a year and a half ago. I
Yeah.
It was very, very scary to me, especially as someone that has a robust pro bono practice.
And then the second thing that they did that that stood out to me was that they agreed to have an independent investigator to be mutually agreed with the Trump administration come in to evaluate not just their hiring practices on a go forward basis, but also their promotion and retention practices.
And it gave such
Immediate
Support to the fears that my non white friends had felt.
About what was going to happen to them and their data if these firms complied with the Trump administration.
And all of these associates just found out.
Via New York Times News алерт.
that their firm has committed them to doing these things.
When Jeremy London, the executive partner of Scadden, made this deal, he sent a firmwide email about how
They had been engaged in illegal DEI practices prior.
And uh
T
To be an attorney and receive that at all.
Insane, but to be a black attorney at Scadden
And receive that email when w I think our stats are still single digits on the percentage of black associates in
the law firm and in the industry broadly.
And so
I'm on the bus.
And I'm thinking
What's the next proactive step?
I went home.
And uh
Wrote this email.
And I outline what are my asks for the firm? What should we be doing? It's not just stomp your feet and say do something, it's stomp your feet and say,
These are the things that we could do.
And then I called my parents who are
They were both JAG attorney and then stayed with the Air Force for their entire careers. And they are white people who live in Ohio, who have a lot of faith in systems.
And I said
I am not calling to ask if this action might get me fired.
I'm calling
To ask, does it feel unfair? Is there something else I should exhaust first? I was careful to explain to people that.
I I had really tried. I felt
Everything else possible to not
Torch a career.
And so
Sent this email.
Was locked out of my
internal email within three hours and received a a call the next morning that I
Texted and said, I'm a very good attorney, please put this in writing.
And the
received an email that said
As you probably expected.
We accept your resignation.
And
What ends up happening?
is I get removed from all of the systems and
A week later.
Exactly what
I said would happen happens and Scadden announces via New York Times news alert.
None of my I'm still friends with all of the people I was friends with at the firm before that. There was no
previous conversation there was n and they were
Asking for meetings, having meetings, attending meetings, talking to managing partners until
Literally thirty seconds before the New York Times news alert comes out announcing that Scadden has promised a hundred million dollars in pro bono work to the Trump administration.
Despite the fact that not only do they not have an executive order entered against them, but my understanding is that the Trump admin didn't even agree to withdraw their EEO C demand letter. It's one of the worst deals.
Not to sound like Donald Trump, but it's one of the worst deals of all time. Like
It's insane.
These accommodations to the Trump administration, whether
from law firms, whether from you know, look at Columbia University. Like some people sort of say, Oh, they didn't give up that much. And it's mostly sort of posturing and optics. And like why pick a fight if you don't have to?
Yeah.
I think a lot of people think that it's twenty sixteen and are so convinced of their own intellectual superiority.
that they are ignoring that the Trump administration is outplaying them.
There's a real problem.
With people being convinced
That
We are once again in a situation where you have a disorganized president who is blustery, who doesn't know what he's doing.
And it's a real indictment of judgment.
To be able to say
Donald Trump!
Is uh he's stupid, so uh
I it doesn't matter. We're gonna just beat him.
I had people say to me in meetings
Well, this'll all work itself out in three years because people are gonna be coming out of the Trump administration trying to get jobs and nobody will hire them because we're all mad.
We are fundamental misaligned.
On what we think is going to come in the next three years, if we fold on this now, because I do not think that there is an end to the Trump administration.
If
We do not hold the line and act collectively.
Rachel's poise is matched by her anger about the way her firm's leaders responded to pressure from the government. So are there practical implications of law firms appeasing a presidential administration? And what sort of precedent does it set for other businesses? We'll talk about that after the break.
Stay with us.
Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.
There can be two types of companies.
Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future?
That is human centered.
I'm Rana El Calyubi.
And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more.
As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.
Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future.
and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.
Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.
Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show.
Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada.
It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode.
I hope to see you there.
Mm.
Before the break, Rachel Cohen shared details of her failed attempt to get law firm Scadna ARPS to stand up to the Trump administration.
Now we discuss whether there's a legal basis for businesses and law firms to serve as part of the checks and balances in a democratic system, plus what it takes to spur collective action among wealthy, powerful people.
Let's dive back in.
I've been asking the CEOs on the show and and other CEOs the extent to which
business and I guess law firms as part of that are part of the checks and balances in the American political system overall.
And it it feels that way to me that it should be, but is there any legal basis?

Thinking that
You know, that business that law firms are part of the checks and balances.
I think business less so.
I think that

I I certainly would argue that there's a moral obligation when
Business leaders want to be listened to and respected.
and dismantle guardrails on American capitalism so that they
can achieve certain profits that then there becomes a moral obligation for you to
continue to speak on those things even when it's hard, but I don't think there's a legal one. And I think that's just the nature of capitalism.
I do think with law firms it's different.
Because you swear your oaths.
Most of us swear an oath to the Constitution.
If you work in this industry, and especially if you've made millions and millions of dollars off of it.
And your industry is crucial for the functioning of American democracy.
And you also swore an oath.
kind of to the law and the concept of this American experiment broadly.
then yes, I think there's an obligation for you to
Ensure that the law continues to exist.
The decisions to make these accommodations to the Trump administration by Scadden, by Paul Weiss, by other law firms.
I mean they're doing that.
Not necessarily for legal reasons, but for business reasons, right? Because otherwise it's gonna cost them money.
I mean isn't it ultimately
I don't know. Ultimately a business argument to say
Oh, we you know, we wanna keep
doing that work for the government.
Or, you know, we don't want to be blacklisted in some way.
I think
Number one.
It's a bad business decision in the long term.
And I'll come back to that in a second.
I'm gonna read you the profits per equity partner at Paul Weiss and ScaddenARPs.
And this is the average, the average what the average partner earns in profits on an annual basis.
twenty twenty three profits per equity partner.
Uh
Paul Weiss, six million five hundred and seventy four thousand dollars.
Scadnarps.
Five million four hundred and three thousand dollars.
Annually.
So
I just want to make sure that when we're talking about, you know
What
Profits are being lost, and also the people who again.
swore an oath to the constitution who are
working in this industry who need it to exist, who are clearing five million dollars a year. But
I think that
The long term business strategy.
Of capitulating to someone with authoritarian and oligarchical tendencies.
We've seen the way that Elon Musk operates and how he turns on people on a dime. Scadden represented Elon Musk in his Twitter acquisition.
And that man has no loyalty.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't have loyalty to each other.
To hed your bets.
On being in good favor with someone who does not respect people, it's much less about policy aims of the Trump admin, and that I certainly would not be quitting my job. Oh, if I didn't quit when he got elected, I didn't.
Іно, далі.
Though they have in the past, but I I certainly don't expect that from a business.
That's not
What this is. It's not about politics. It's about.
Existential
infringement on American values and the existence of a constitutional republic in this country.
Mm-hmm.
So
What's next for you and what's
Your goal? I mean, in some ways you've become a a a bit of a a pie piper. I know you you create a toolkit for lawyers who want to
Protest internally.
What's your goal in all this?
I don't have a next career move with the nature of my educational credentials, my financial
situation, having worked at Scadden for several years, all of these things, I already felt that I had an obligation.
Two.
Try to prevent the bad thing that I see coming.
For some of those folks who
Or listening to this who may be like
She's a l it's a little bit too extreme. Like it's is it really that bad? Maybe there's some
Other impact that could

What
An alternate view of America's future looks like?
Oh, that's the path that I'm on.
Right.
Like that's
That's the path that we go down.
If people collectively act now.
and intervene.
That's the path that we're on is some bad things will happen. We're already seeing them happen. There's people with legal status being deported to Salvadorian prisons.
Because of clerical errors, because they're deporting people over
Judge's orders.
But
I think
That
There's
Absolutely a path to not just interrupt these harms.
But to channel the kind of response and reaction right now.
To make a much better
Better version.
Of this country.
And I think no matter what, things get darker before that happens. But
I think
At the end of the day, I'm coming on and saying these bad things could happen.
But I'm acting in a way.
Where
I'm very confident they don't have to.
The fear of retaliation
І со стронг.
And sort of where is the bravery
gonna come from. And I guess if you're already making five or six million dollars a year and you're not brave enough to push back, but
I don't know.
Jeff Bezos is a billionaire and he's not pushing back. So, you know, like where is that bravery gonna come from?
It's gonna come from people of color.
It's gonna come from people that
understand theory and allyship.
And uh
are plugged into their communities and care about them deeply.
And so
Hopefully we also get some people that have a little bit more agency, but if we don't
That's all that's ever worked anyway.
Yeah.
Well, and it'll come from people like you who have decided that this is something that is
Powerful enough for you to
Build your life around. Thank you for
Coming on to talk.
Two
Me into our
Our listeners about this.
Thanks so much, Bob.

Rachel obviously isn't a fan of Donald Trump.
But you don't need to share her personal views to wonder whether the biggest white shoe law firms are being brave in the face of a government challenge.
Would they advise a client in a similar position to just give in?
Listening to Rachel, I'm reminded of something Merck's former CEO Ken Frazier said to me, it's not a principle unless you're willing to lose something over it.
If you're not willing to lose anything, then it's just a preference.
So what are your principles?
What do you stand for? What are you prepared to defend even at a cost?
These are questions that business leaders should always be asking themselves, but in today's environment, it's particularly critical.
I'm Bob Safian.
Thanks for listening.
Rapid response is a wait what original.
I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashimaku Tonina.
Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli.
Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Letal Malad.
For more, visit rapidresponesshow.com.