‘Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further’: What Darth Vader Should Teach Law Firms About Settling With Trump

“I’ve just made a deal that’ll keep the Empire out of here forever,” Lando Calrissian explained in The Empire Strikes Back. We soon realize his deal involved allowing Darth Vader to ensnare the Han and Leia as bait to lure Luke Skywalker. Once Vader had Luke, everyone could go their separate ways. Then Vader decided to hand Han Solo to Boba Fett and require Leia and Chewbacca to remain under arrest in Cloud City, while Lando grumbled, “This deal is getting worse all the time!” A few beats later, Vader he’d put Han on ice and ordered Leia and Chewy taken to his ship.

“You said they’d be left at the city under my supervision!” Lando exclaimed.

Sorry for the spoilers on a 45-year-old movie.

With that, every Gen Xer and elder Millennial Star Wars fan learned that if you make a deal under duress with a retaliatory government official to save your business, you are a hopeless chump and will get systematically rolled. It was a raw demonstration of what happens when you negotiate with someone who doesn’t believe in the concept of negotiation.

Biglaw firms striking deals with the Trump administration to — theoretically — “protect” their firm or their clients from government interference, missed this lesson. These firms — Paul Weiss, Willkie, Skadden, Milbank (and potentially more to come) — now enter their Lando Era, watching the administration heap daily humiliation upon them while continually altering the deal to the firms’ detriment.

Who could’ve seen this coming except everyone?

Each firm technically struck a separate deal, but they all followed a basic structure. Purge diversity from the firm, vaguely commit to affirmative action for the dumbest FedSoc kids at on-campus interviewing, and commit tens of millions — most offering $100 million — in pro bono payola for Trump-approved causes. In exchange, the firms would be free to continue their work, unimpeded by onerous (if obviously illegal) executive orders and the firms can carry on claiming that they have settled without admitting wrongdoing (except Paul Weiss, who apparently specifically threw its former partner under a bus).

But the important thing each of these firms want you to know is that this was a professional deal among very serious people conducted at a very serious boardroom table and not, in fact, the legal equivalent of getting choked out mid-sentence. And that it’s patently unfair that radical agitators — like, well, Above the Law — characterize these deals as “surrender” or “bending the knee.” No one seriously involved in these deals would say something like that! Let’s check in on the OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE TAKE:

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that “Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong, and he looks forward to putting their pro bono legal concessions toward implementing his America First agenda.”

The White House is the one saying “bend the knee!” Forget Star Wars, this is some Game of Thrones ass shit. It would still be missing the incest subplot, though this is the same president who once said that “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her,” so… maybe it’s closer than we thought. Democracies don’t customarily talk in terms of collecting bannermen to fight their battles for them, and yet here we are. All we need to complete the medieval fantasy is the return of small pox though RFK Jr is already working hard on that one.

No matter how much these firms want to posture as though they made narrowly tailored, professionally negotiated agreements, the counterparty is using mainstream media time to dunk on them about how they renamed all the managing partners Reek and keep them locked in the White House basement.

Not to be outdone, here’s what Trump thinks of the “admit no wrongdoing” status that firms THOUGHT they bought with the deal:

Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump? $100 million. Another $100 million for — ah — damages that they’ve done. But they give you $100 million and then they announce ‘but we’ve done nothing wrong.’ And I agree. But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.

If the administration had only set fire to the crucially important “we’re innocent… this was just to avoid a distraction for our clients” claim it would be bad enough. But now he’s moving Leia to his ship.

In defending their deals, the firms have nurtured a press narrative that really all they committed to do is perform a lot of pro bono work for veterans — something that appeals to conservatives and liberals alike — in order to claim that this deal isn’t all that radical.

“Part of the way I’ll spend some of the money we’re getting from the law firms….”

That doesn’t sound like the firms are going to just do $100 million in veteran health claims.

Trump has proposed using the free legal services that the firms thought they’d committed to conservative-friendly — but that would nonetheless remain causes of the firms’ choosing — to handle coal leases for the administration’s proposed CoalPunk AI revolution and to negotiate tariff deals… before he realized tariffs were tanking the economy. It’s not just Trump speaking out of advanced dementia either, with Stephen Miller, who relishes his role as a Stormtrooper, echoing this sentiment describing the deals as part of an initiative to bank a billion in free legal services. Meanwhile, a Heritage Foundation group has approached the surrender firms asking for free legal work and citing their Trump pledges.

So far the law firms aren’t acknowledging these alterations to the deal. But the White House remains very clear:

“Assign.”

GREAT WORK, IDIOTS!

And it’s not going to end with coal leases.

The DOJ probably is buckling as every competent career attorney eyes the exit. But don’t worry! This administration will absolutely “assign” one of the surrendering firms to start handling these matters. It probably will be a matter of days and not weeks.

And what are the firms gonna do about it? Other than privately mumble that “This deal is getting worse all the time!” they’re going to go along with it because they’re already pot committed at this point. Reversing course now doesn’t get them anything but an even harsher executive order that they’ve already told the whole market they don’t have the courage to fight.

These firms thought they were buying peace. What they bought was a public admission that they could be shaken down. And at every stage from here on, the terms will change. Because bullies don’t honor deals. They escalate. You give them access to a tibanna gas mine, and next thing you know, they’re freezing your friends in carbonite and conscripting you as the shadow Justice Department.

The deal was always going to end like this. From the first deal, we’ve been saying it would end like this. Because we watched Empire Strikes Back and as a kindergartner we understood what happens if you’re stupid enough to make a deal like this.

Now all those firms have left is to pray Trump doesn’t alter it any further.

Another spoiler for you: he will.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

The post ‘Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further’: What Darth Vader Should Teach Law Firms About Settling With Trump appeared first on Above the Law.