Biglaw Doesn’t Give A Damn About Its Young Lawyers

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WHAT A STRANGE, SAD TIME TO BE A YOUNG LAWYER IN BIGLAW. This is a generation that was raised to value diversity, speak up for injustice, and be “authentic.” Biglaw echoed these values — or, at least, pretended to — as they competed to recruit talent from the nation’s best law schools.

“They wined and dined us, then dumped us, and sided for Donald Trump,” sums up one Biglaw associate.

I’m used to hearing gripes from associates about how miserable they are — the long hours, high pressure, and intense competition. But this time, it’s different. It’s not just the hypocrisy, but the clear message that principles are expendable, that talent is expendable.

Young lawyers feel gutted and betrayed. As major law firms either cave to Donald Trump’s demands by making deals with the administration or cower in silence, the gap between law firm leaders and the young lawyers who work for them has never been more stark. In speaking with over a dozen young lawyers, I was struck by the mental toll that all this is taking, and how lawyers of color and those in the LBGTQ community feel especially isolated.

To be clear, it’s not just the young who are watching in horror as venerated legal institutions eagerly sell out to Trump in the name of survival. Some senior lawyers have also left firms that made deals with Trump. One prominent departure is Paul Weiss partner Jeh Johnson, a high-profile Black lawyer, who’s decamping for Columbia University. And, just a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is losing lawyers because of its Trump deal.

Still, there’s something particularly sad about the plight of young lawyers — the way Biglaw dismisses their heartfelt concerns about the integrity of the profession, leaving them little sense of ownership in the institutions they work for. At A&O Shearman, for example, over 500 associates and staff signed an open letter pleading with the firm not to enter a deal with Trump. The upshot: the firm went ahead with the deal anyway, gifting the Trump administration $125 million in free legal services.

“We signed up for a noble profession that’s focused on justice and the rule of law, and now we’re helping to avoid it?” asks an associate at a Silicon Valley firm that’s been quiet on Trump’s attacks. “I feel partners aren’t going to bat for us. It feels like the partners versus the associates.”

An associate of color at a New York firm puts it more bluntly: “It’s clear that they don’t give a shit about us,” noting that the firm has made zero effort to engage associates on the issue.

Some associates say the culture of repression and fear is becoming unbearable. “It’s bizarre,” a midlevel associate at a Washington, D.C.-based firm tells me. “No one’s allowed to talk about the one thing that’s on everyone’s mind. We’re all supposed to pretend nothing’s happening. It feels like my emotions are going to explode.”

Mental health has long been a problem in Biglaw, even before these developments. An American Bar Association survey in 2023 found that 17% of Biglaw lawyers and employees feel “emotionally depleted,” with 53% of respondents reporting low leadership support.

Biglaw made a big to-do about mental wellness a few years ago but what about now? “I remember during Covid when partners would call to see if you’re okay,” says an associate at a California-based firm. “But after being in a situation where you felt supported, there’s now no acknowledgment at all of what we’re all going through. It’s alienating, like, are we in the same reality? Why am I killing myself if I’m working in an authoritarian regime?” This associate adds, “we need mental health support because it’s very stressful, and what’s making it worse is that people don’t feel empowered to raise the subject.”

For minority lawyers, the sense of betrayal is particularly sharp. After years of promoting DEI as a core value, many of these same firms are now trashing those efforts and quietly scrubbing all mention of DEI and social justice on their websites, as if they were episodes of shame. The message? Inclusion is conditional — expendable when power shifts. For lawyers of color and other marginalized groups, it’s devastating. It tells them they were never truly part of the firm’s vision for the future.

“I’ve been asking people if we’re going to do the DLA thing and eliminate affinity groups and pronouns,” says a Hispanic LBGTQ associate. “Partners don’t understand what we have to lose when we don’t have a support network or have the right to our identity.”

One reason underrepresented lawyers feel so vulnerable is that they feel personally attacked by Trump’s directives. “DEI is something I value,” says a White & Case associate of color, who picked the firm because of its commitment to diversity. “It’s not just my job but who I am.” Though this associate has been active in recruiting law students to the firm, s/he has second thoughts: “Now, I wonder, who are you? Now, when I talk to students, I feel like I’m playing people.” (White & Case has eliminated its DEI efforts in the U.S. and internationally.)

It’s a given that lawyers of color will feel this added burden “because at the end of the day, it’s harder for us to break through,” says Ru Bhatt, a recruiter at Major Lindsey & Africa. “We can’t hide who we are. We’re rocking the boat just by existing.”

But as much as lawyers of color feel directly under attack, some are extremely reluctant to speak out in this political environment.

“I am a first-gen American, a first-gen college grad and law school grad, and I am the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants,” says an associate at a Washington, D.C. firm. “I grew up dirt poor. The fact that I even work at one of these firms is a miracle. I think there are plenty of white-identifying lawyers who work at these firms who don’t have as much to lose as I do, and whose parents’ legal status in this country isn’t threatened.”

For this lawyer and others in a similar position, former Skadden Arps associate Rachel Cohen who publicly pushed the firm to stand up to Trump, has become an icon of defiance and a powerful surrogate. (Cohen eventually left Skadden Arps, which later signed a deal with the administration that promised $100 million in free legal services for Trump’s pet projects.)

“I admire Rachel’s activism because she recognizes her privilege as a white woman and understands that it’s unfair for advocacy to fall upon those of us who are most marginalized,” says the Salvadoran American associate who feels deeply conflicted about staying silent.

Cohen, who recently joined litigator Abbe Lowell’s firm that’s representing individuals under investigation by the Trump administration, tells me, “I 100% think it’s hitting lawyers of color harder and that the firms are treating them repugnantly.” (Joining Cohen at the Lowell firm is lawyer Brenna Trout Frey, who also quit Skadden in protest.)

So where does this all leave young lawyers? As with everything Trump has touched, it’s created fissures that didn’t exist just a year ago. There are now “Trump firms” (the nine firms that have formally signed agreements with Trump, plus those that are Trump-aligned — e.g., Sullivan & Cromwell and Jones Day), anti-Trump firms (Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling, Williams & Connelly, Susman & Godfrey, and Jenner & Block, among others), and the vast majority that are trying desperately to stay under the radar (though some, like Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and Davis Polk are now refusing certain pro bono work to avoid Trump’s wrath).

That also means that young lawyers who identify with one political camp or another will gravitate to certain firms. And, of course, there are those who don’t give a hoot about the issue at all and are happy to go with the highest bidder — and perhaps that’s the type that best aligns with Biglaw’s true priority: making money.

In the short run, though, firms that have bowed to Trump might not do so well in recruiting the best and the brightest. “I think younger lawyers are now galvanized to join firms like Perkins that have stood up to Trump,” says an Asian American associate at one of the firms that signed a deal with Trump. “It’s a ‘fuck you’ to those [capitulating] firms.”

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Vivia Chen writes “The Ex-Careerist” column on Substack where she unleashes her unvarnished views about the intersection of work, life, and politics. A former lawyer, she was an opinion columnist at Bloomberg Law and The American Lawyer. Subscribe to her Substack by clicking here:

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