Attorney urges major law firm to resist Trump attacks in viral resignation letter
An attorney resigned from the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, posting a sharply critical resignation letter that called on the company to stand up to President Trump' amid a crackdown on law firms.
Rachel Cohen, an associate at the firm, shared a strongly worded “conditional notice” of resignation with her colleagues on Thursday evening. She shared a screenshot of the letter in a LinkedIn post that went viral and has been reposted 1,145 times as of Saturday evening.
“Please consider this email my two week notice revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to our current moment,” Cohen said in the email to her colleagues at the firm.
In the LinkedIn post, she said this moment is "existential."
"If being on this career path demands I accept that my industry—because this is certainly not unique to Skadden—will allow an authoritarian government to ignore the courts, I refuse to take it any further. As I have said before, others stand to lose far, far more than a paycheck," she said.
Cohen's resignation was issued just hours after the Trump administration reversed an executive order that had removed the security clearances of attorneys at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. This reversal followed the firm's commitment to provide $40 million in free legal services for cases “that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society.”
The executive order aimed at Paul Weiss was a response to the actions of a former employee, Mark Pomerantz, who had previously served as a prosecutor overseeing the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into Trump’s alleged financial offenses. In yielding to Trump's demands, the firm conceded that Pomerantz had engaged in misconduct.
On social media, critics say the law firm has given in to a “shakedown” by Trump. But the firm’s chair, Brad Karp, defended the deal he struck in an email to all employees, per the New York Times.
The Hill reached out to Skadden for comment.
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