Trump Smirks - Legal Sector Scrambles

Whether the law firms cut a deal with the Trump administration or successfully sued about the legality of the Executive Orders, they have been dramatically impacted. 

As The New York Times documents, US President Donald Trump promised change and that's what he set in play in the legal sector. According to those in the loop, he's mildly surprised that he has triggered such an upheaval. Law firms will never be able to return to their pre-election branding and operations. 

A leader with a deep understanding of media, Trump has kept this legal story alive way behind the usual expiration dates for such developments. 

It was in late March of this year, for instance, that the chair of Paul Weiss Brad Karp made his controversial journey to the Oval Office to negotiate the firm's way out of an Executive Order. That saga, along with its fallouts, remains sticky. In the past few days influential Law.com featured Karp's meeting with litigation partners, reassuring them of the health of the firm, including the status of the litigation practices. That's after nine partner litigators have left since that historic trip to Washington. 

A competing narrative is that Paul Weiss could strategically move to focusing more resources in its lucrative transactional practices and maintaining the litigation ones as necessary infrastructure to remain a full-service firm. Is the future of the litigation practices in play? 

Simultaneously news headlines continue to be made when Skadden, another firm with cut a deal, eliminates racial justice terminology from its Foundation's Fellowship. That should have never been a story.

What would probably have been another non-story is that Kirkland & Ellis, which also negotiated with the administration, lopped off its DEI function. The usual narrative is about its growth as the largest and most financially successful law firm in the world. DEI? So. But Trump has managed to make that news.

Obviously, leaders with an almost mystical ability to manage messaging are the ones in charge. They have outfoxed just about every other kind of player. A key strategy is destabilization. As those targeted scramble those media-savvy leaders acquire more influence and power.  

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