Politico Article
A new wave of law firms founded to meet the legal needs of civil servants and government critics is emerging in Washington as the industry responds to the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Veteran litigators and former government attorneys have begun announcing the formation of new law firms aimed at representing individuals targeted by the president and government employees impacted by mass layoffs across the federal workforce. At least three such firms have opened their doors in the last two weeks.
“What we’re doing is a natural consequence of the way the administration is behaving,” said Clayton Bailey, a former Justice Department litigator who last week co-founded the Civil Service Law Center, a new firm that bills itself as “representing federal workers seeking fair treatment from an increasingly unfair government.”
“When you start doing a long string of lawless tactics across a number of different areas … it creates a need for more people to fill that gap and try to deal with the endless steam of injustice that’s coming out of the administration these days,” Bailey said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the administration’s first 100 days, the White House executed an unprecedented pressure campaign against some of the nation’s largest law firms, sanctioning those associated with Trump’s political enemies and striking deals with others to ensure their legal support in matters supported by the president. One federal judge has already ruled that Trump’s order targeting the firm Perkins Coie was unconstitutional and other judges have mostly halted enforcement of orders against three additional firms.
In response, Abbe Lowell, the veteran defense attorney who has represented Hunter Biden, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, made the first move into the new boutique firm trend on May 2, announcing his departure from Winston & Strawn to start his own firm partially staffed by lawyers who had quit jobs at other major firms in protest of Big Law’s capitulation to the White House.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/new-law-firms-trump-targets-00354711
