The Washington lawyers who suddenly love Trump

Summary
Firms that blacklisted his officials in 2020 are now claiming special expertise to work with them in 2025.Elite law firms in Washington are giddy about Donald Trump’s re-election. Since November many of them have been presenting an optimistic case about how they can help businesses navigate the complex regulatory and policy environment to come. As the Republican Party has taken a more populist turn, they contend that Republican government is no longer “good for business." Who better to manage looming policy controversies, the thinking goes, than the steady world of white-shoe law firms?
Top law firms have talented attorneys and no shortage of institutional knowledge about how the bureaucratic machinery works in the abstract. Yet they are hardly chock full of partners with high-level experience serving in the first Trump administration. This is in contrast with prominent liberal attorneys, who travel through a well-oiled revolving door between Democratic administrations and the private sector. Many firms shut that door to Republicans four years ago, depriving themselves of lawyers who worked in Mr. Trump’s first administration, alongside many who will return for the second.
Practitioners in some specialties, such as trade and antitrust, managed to avoid the cordon sanitaire that elite firms placed around Trump lawyers. Talk to many attorneys who served the president, however, and they will tell you that the message from most firms was clear: Republicans need not apply. The one firm for which that wasn’t the case, Jones Day, had a book-length hit job published against it in 2022: “Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice." As Jones Day’s internal deliberations were leaked in the press, there was a noticeable lack of outrage from the firm’s peers—as if they would never be subjected to such treatment.
The same legal elite that refused to work with the previous Trump administration are now alerting the press that they have the necessary expertise to work with the next Trump administration. Lawyers are nothing if not bold.
This isn’t simply a question of personal relationships. On what kinds of issues will these firms have to interact with the Trump administration and counsel their clients? The coming regulatory assault on race-conscious diversity, equity and inclusion programs is no doubt high on the list. Yet these firms hardly have clean hands on this issue, with most of them having made their own “diversity pledges" to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. Among some of the pledged activities are race quotas on firm-management committees and the transfer of institutional clients to partners based on the race of the latter. You can picture how these firms might try to defend their clients from the Trump administration’s civil-rights regulators: “This isn’t so bad—our client’s DEI policies are nowhere near as extensive as ours are."
If past is prologue, the same firms that claim valuable capabilities in understanding the incoming administration are also likely arming their associate ranks to wage all-out war against it. Recall Mr. Trump’s first four years in office. Whether it was the travel ban, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, transgenderism in the armed forces or the census, elite law firms could always be counted on to man the barricades against the legal-policy interests of the Trump administration, usually pro bono.
Never mind that none of these firms truly work for free. It’s the billable hours from paying clients that subsidize their charity work, including the partisan efforts they undertake during a Trump administration.
Elite law firms that intend to serve their clients’ needs during Republican government should take notice of political reality in our two-party system and curb their growing one-party dominance.
Meantime, businesses would be wise to cast a skeptical eye at law firms claiming Republican political expertise without Republican political experience. If an elite firm’s Trump-administration knowledge comes from when its liberal partners deposed a Trump cabinet secretary on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, businesses might want to rethink the advice they’re getting.
Mr. Fragoso served as chief counsel to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (2021-25) and chief counsel for judicial nominations at the Senate Judiciary Committee (2019-21).