Legal Ethics Roundup: Impeachment + Judicial Threats, Another Law Firm Attack, Ethics + Politics Of ABA Ratings, Law Applications Get Trump Bump (Again)

Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here.

Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.

Highlights from Last Week – Top Ten Headlines

#1 Continued Attacks on Lawyers — Federal Judge Says “It Sends Little Chills Down My Spine.” From the New York Times: “President Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms, legal experts and analysts say, is undermining a central tenet of the American legal system — the right to a lawyer to argue vigorously on one’s behalf. With the stroke of a pen last week, Mr. Trump sought to cripple Perkins Coie … by stripping its lawyers of security clearances needed to represent some clients and limiting the firm’s access to government buildings and officials. That action came after he revoked security clearances held by any lawyers at the firm Covington & Burling … . Mr. Trump’s attack on Big Law comes as his administration has also gone after law schools, the American Bar Association and even lawyers inside the government itself who might question or hinder his agenda. … Last week, the top federal prosecutor in Washington threatened to stop hiring graduates from Georgetown Law School if its dean, William Treanor, failed to abolish the school’s diversity programs. Mr. Treanor all but dared the prosecutor, Ed Martin, to make good on his threats, saying that the First Amendment would forbid them.” …

“This is certainly the biggest affront to the legal profession in my lifetime,” said Samuel W. Buell, who is a longtime professor of law at Duke University and a former federal prosecutor.

A federal judge on Wednesday sided with Perkins Coie in an initial courtroom skirmish with the White House, temporarily barring a major portion of Mr. Trump’s executive order against the firm from taking effect. “I am sure that many in the profession are watching in horror at what Perkins Coie is going through,” said Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington. She added, “It sends little chills down my spine” to hear arguments that a president can punish individuals and companies like this.

Read the rest of the NYT coverage here. And if you haven’t read Treanor’s response to Martin, you’ll find it here.

#2 Three Legal Ethics Scholars File Declarations to Support Perkins Coie’s Temporary Restraining Order Win. There will be more litigation, to be sure, over the Executive Order targeting Perkins Coie. The firm has created a website for accessing the legal resources used in its defense, which includes declarations from Bruce Green (Fordham), Robert Hirshon (Michigan), and Roy Simon (Hofstra). I recommend reading all three.

#3 Paul Weiss Also Targeted With Executive Order. From Politico: “President Donald Trump continued his retaliatory spree against major law firms on Friday, signing an executive order targeting New York firm Paul Weiss days after a judge ruled that major parts of a similar order were unconstitutional. Trump’s new order seeks to suspend the security clearances of attorneys with the firm and limit their access to government buildings, ability to get federal jobs and receive money from federal contracts.” Read more here.

#4 “Judges Become Targets in Combative Political Environment” Including Calls for Impeachment. From the Wall Street Journal: “Having taken the White House and captured the Congress, President Trump’s movement is unleashing its fury on the one branch of government it doesn’t fully control: the judiciary. As more judges have blocked or slowed some of Trump’s initiatives, the president’s surrogates have been increasingly strident in their responses, casting adverse rulings as not only incorrect but also illegitimate. … Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who has called for impeaching ‘corrupt judges,’ reposted a photo Thursday of U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who blocked sanctions Trump imposed on a Democratic-leaning law firm, Perkins Coie. Lee also has proposed legislation to limit federal courts’ power to rule on administration policies. Perhaps the most aggressive has been Elon Musk, the president’s surrogate and billionaire benefactor, who has accused judges of interfering with the democratic process. ‘The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,’ he said in one post. … Judges say the blowback won’t influence their rulings. But they fear that the messages from on high are whipping up threats and potentially violence against judges and their families.” Read more here (gift link). Side note: This isn’t the first time we’ve seen politically-motivated calls for impeaching judges, the most infamous being the campaign against Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those efforts, of course, failed. Here’s an excerpt from a speech Warren delivered in 1974 after retiring from the bench that could’ve been written today: “[T]he people of our nation are shocked by the disclosures and many are becoming so cynical that they are even doubting the soundness of our constitutional system. They overlook the fact that these transgressions do not stem from following the Constitution but rather from circumventing it.” Read more about the Warren impeachment history in my forthcoming Cardozo Law Review article, “Ethics Accountability: The Next Era for Judges and Lawyers.”

#5 “Threats Against Judges ‘Top Priority,’ Fed. Judiciary Says.” From Law360: “Protecting federal judges is a ‘top priority’ as violent threats spike against a polarized political backdrop, making congressional funding for additional security measures more important than ever, the U.S. Judicial Conference said Tuesday. In a press conference discussing the federal judiciary’s 2024 annual report, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard J. Sullivan said the Judicial Conference is very concerned about threats against federal judges, which are at the highest levels in decades.” Read more here.

#6 “Misconduct Hearing Underway for Prosecutor in Anti-Trump-Protest Cases.” From the Washington Post: “A federal prosecutor accused of manipulating evidence alongside a D.C. police detective in an apparent attempt to convict anti-Trump demonstrators of rioting in the nation’s capital was overwhelmed by an avalanche of cases brought over widespread disruption pegged to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, her lawyers said Tuesday. In the opening day of her misconduct case tried by prosecutors with D.C.’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, defense lawyers for Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens painted a picture of an office in disarray as she sought to lead the prosecution of more than 200 cases stemming from mass arrests made over several chaotic hours in the District.” Read more here (gift link).

#7 Judges Should Avoid Advising on Presidential Orders According to MD Ethics Opinion. From the Maryland Daily Record: “Maryland judges cannot provide bar association members with information or legal analysis on White House executive orders, the Maryland Judicial Ethics Committee found in an opinion published on Tuesday. The opinion, published in response to a judge and a Maryland State Bar Association section council member’s inquiry, states that a judge’s participation in providing legal analysis on the White House executive orders ‘might reasonably raise a question of impropriety,’ contrary to the Maryland Code of Judicial Conduct. ‘Although judges appropriately participate in general educational activities through the MSBA and other bar organizations, in our view, for the current and recalled/senior judges who serve on these MSBA committees, the evaluation and analysis of White House Executive Orders is so specific that it would constitute the practice of law and, moreover, can be seen as indirectly advising the members’ clients themselves,’ the Maryland Judicial Ethics Committee wrote.” Read more here.

#8 “GOP Sens. Escalate Fight With ABA Over ‘Leftist’ Statements.” From Law360: “A group of Senate Republicans are once again going after the American Bar Association, which they claim has become a ‘leftist’ organization, and announced Monday they will disregard ABA ratings on judicial nominees and encouraged the Trump administration and their colleagues to do the same. Six Republicans, five of whom serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday they sent ABA President William R. Bay a letter on March 7 informing the group of their position, which they justified based on the ABA’s recent claim that the Trump administration has been thwarting the rule of law since taking office in January.” Read more here and download the letter from the Republican members of the Senate here. Side note: This isn’t the first time politicians have threatened to ignore ABA ratings on judicial nominees. In 2001, the George W. Bush administration took a similar action. For more on that history, see “White House Ends Bar Association’s Role in Screening Federal Judges” from the New York Times published in March 2001 here (gift link) and read the letter from former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez to then-ABA President Martha Barnett here. (There is a much longer, more complicated history to tell about the ethics and politicization of ABA judicial ratings — see my book Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court.)

#9 Lawyer Suspended for “Carelessly” Disclosing Documents in Alex Jones Case. From the Connecticut Post: “A high-profile New Haven attorney has been barred from practicing law for two weeks in Connecticut for ‘carelessly’ sharing confidential medical records of Sandy Hook families with other attorneys during the 2022 Alex Jones defamation awards trials.” Read more here.

#10 Law School Applications See Another Trump Bump; Meanwhile CA May Grant Temp License to Practice After Botched Bar Exam. Two headlines for #10. First, from Bloomberg Law: “The California Committee of Bar Examiners recommended Friday that the state’s highest court expand a pre-license program to people who took the poorly administered February 2025 bar exam.” Read more here. Second, from the Wall Street Journal: “A weakening white-collar job market and a contentious political climate are fueling interest in law school, leading to one of the most competitive years for would-be law students in recent memory. The number of applicants to the nation’s nearly 200 law schools is up 20.5% compared with last year. Georgetown University Law Center alone received 14,000 applications to fill 650 spots, while the University of Michigan Law School now has more applications than at any point in its 166 years of existence. When Michigan Law’s admissions dean, Sarah Zearfoss, shared the numbers with faculty members, ‘The whole room gasped,’ she said.” Read more here (gift link). Side note: For some historical context about the so-called “Trump Bump” in law school applications, take a look at Ben Barton’s (Tennessee) book published in 2019, Fixing Law Schools: From Collapse to the Trump Bump and Beyond.

Where’s the Rest of the Roundup?

Revisit the “Welcome Back Edition” for an explanation of the new format. And keep an eye out for next month’s “First Monday Edition” with reading recommendations, analysis, reforms watch, jobs, events, and much more.

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Renee Knake Jefferson holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston. Check out more of her writing at the Legal Ethics Roundup. Find her on X (formerly Twitter) at @reneeknake or Bluesky at legalethics.bsky.social. 

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