More Than 500 Law Firms Back Perkins Coie in Fight With Trump

More than 500 law firms on Friday threw their support behind some of their embattled peers, declaring that President Trump’s recent crackdown on the law firm industry poses “a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself.”The firms, 504 in all, signed a so-called friend of the court brief that was filed on behalf of Perkins Coie, the first firm to receive an executive order restricting its business.Perkins Coie sued the Trump administration, and a judge has temporarily blocked the president’s order, which jeopardized its ability to represent government contractors and limited its access to federal buildings.While the judge weighs whether to permanently block the order, a wide-ranging effort has been underway to collect signatures for the brief.The New York Times reported this week that none of the nation’s top 10 revenue-generating firms signed the brief before a soft deadline on Tuesday, and that remained the case on Friday.

In fact, not a single top 20 firm by revenue, as ranked by American Lawyer, signed, including Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins or Gibson Dunn.Yet in recent days, a few large firms did add their signatures, including Covington & Burling, No.28 in American Lawyer’s rankings; and Arnold & Porter, No.

47.Two other big firms that received executive orders and are also challenging them in court, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, also signed.

All told, nearly 10 firms in the top 100 signed the brief.Other friend of the court briefs were also filed in support of Perkins Coie, including one signed by both the A.C.L.U.and the Cato Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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