BAY AREA LAW STUDENTS have joined a friend of the court brief in support of a law firm targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration for representing clients that Trump believes are adverse to his interests.
The amicus brief was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia where the law firm Susman Godfrey is suing to block the administration from implementing an executive order issued by the president.
Susman Godfrey is a premier litigation firm known for its aggressive representation of companies and individuals in high stakes court cases. It represented Dominion Voting Systems in its lawsuit against Fox News over false reporting on Dominion voting machines in the 2020 election. That case resulted in a $787 million settlement in favor of Dominion.
The president’s order issued April 9 is titled “Addressing Risks from Susman Godfrey” and it alleges the firm “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections.” The order directed federal agencies to revoke security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and terminate federal contracts with the firm.
The president has issued five such orders to date, all against elite law firms who have represented clients the president disfavors. One of those firms (and others who had not been targeted) have settled with the administration by agreeing to do “pro bono” work on causes aligned with the administration’s priorities. Another group, in which Susman is included, has responded to the threats by suing the government.
Susman’s case was filed in federal court on April 11, and on April 15 the firm obtained a court order temporarily blocking the administration from enforcing the executive order pending a hearing. The court later extended the injunction until a final ruling in the case. A hearing on Susman’s motion for summary judgment — that is for judgment without the need for trial — is tentatively scheduled for May 8.
Lawyers have rallied Tuesday to show solidarity with the Susman firm.
An amicus brief, spearheaded by Stanford Law School professor Phillip Malone and signed by 775 law professors, begins by stating that “The President’s Order is a self-declared act of retribution that targets a law firm for representing clients and causes the President disfavors. In inflicting this retribution, the Order contradicts centuries of precedent safeguarding free speech, the right of association, and the right to petition.”
Many other amicus briefs have been filed or are anticipated, including one by 21 states (including California), another by 884 law firms, and more from 777 solo practitioners and small law firms, 23 nongovernmental organizations, 366 former judges, 22 litigation firms, 23 bar associations and lawyer membership organizations (including the bar associations of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago,), 27 former senior governmental officials (including William Webster, former head of the FBI, Susan Rice, former national security advisor, and John Danforth, former ambassador to the United Nations) and a clutch of public interest organizations led by the American Civil Liberties Union.
One amicus filing is by Aaron Caplan, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, who makes the argument that the executive order amounts to a constitutionally forbidden “bill of attainder,” something the U.S. Supreme Court has described in the past as “legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial.”
Caplan says that the drafters of the Constitution “loathed” bills of attainder because they called to mind tyranny experienced in England.
The law student amicus
The amicus filings were supplemented Tuesday by an amicus brief signed by 1,129 law students and 51 student law organizations.
The students are from more than 150 law schools around the country, including UC Law San Francisco, Stanford Law School and UC Berkeley Law. For context, in 2024 there were 196 law schools in the country accredited by the American Bar Association, according to statistics reported by the ABA.
Nearly 200 of the signatories are from Bay Area law schools.
The students’ brief identifies the unique harms that the Susman executive order and the others like it are causing to students who have devoted years of study (and tuition payments) in order to become lawyers. They ask the court “to protect the legal profession they are preparing to join and the core values that the profession serves.”
The amicus brief was filed by the Philadelphia firm Kline & Specter, and San Francisco’s Walkup, Melodia, Kelly, & Schoenberger. Shanin Specter, a founder of Kline & Specter, is the son of the late U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and serves as an adjunct professor at Stanford Law School. He also teaches law at UC Law San Francisco.
The short brief says that the students “have planned for their future on the understanding that the legal profession represents a valuable and honorable profession.” They say that the president’s executive order “compromises” the premise that underlays their desire to become lawyers.
It says the executive order will create a world in which “any lawyer who undertakes a representation disfavored by the executive branch of the government can be ruined through a government-run blacklist.”
The concerns are not abstract, according to the filing. As law students graduate and enter the world of lawyering, they are walking “into an ethical minefield where they must be ready to reject representations or abandon clients to avoid retribution.”
The brief closes with the caution: “the executive order signals a transformation of our legal system. The rules don’t matter anymore. Neither does due process. What matters is being in the good graces of those in power.”
Bay Area law student voices
Yusuf Al-Bazian is a third-year student at UC Law San Francisco. He is also a founder and co-president of the National Plaintiffs Law Association. NPLA is a national organization that has ties to 55 plaintiff law associations on law school campuses around the country. The organization helps law students learn about the benefits and opportunities of working as plaintiffs’ lawyers. Al-Bazian says “the attack on the legal bar is a reason for fear.”
While so far, the Trump executive orders have primarily been directed at elite “Big Law” firms that practice primarily on the defense side, Al-Bazian sees the issue affecting all lawyers.
He says “this is an issue that many big firms, small firms, medium firms, plaintiff side, defense side are aligned on … it’s highlighted the unity and the potential for increased collaboration and understanding between practice areas and disciplines.”
It is, he says, “a beautiful thing” to see how a cross section of people “want to stand up and make this issue their own.”
He said he is heartened by “the instances I’ve seen where lawyers are standing shoulder to shoulder and endorsing statements and the work of attorneys at firms that often they find themselves in contention or competition with, I think that that’s something that needs to be replicated on a wider scale, nationally, politically, and socially.”
Law students signing the amicus brief “will have different practices, but fundamentally we believe in the system. We believe in the ideals of the country … It’s our intended calling to uphold these ideals,” Al-Bazian said.
Michael Flynn is a second-year lawyer at Stanford Law School. He was prepared to spend the summer in the District of Columbia working at the Department of Justice as an intern in the Civil Rights Division, working in the appellate section. It was a plum job. Flynn was happy to get the post and very excited about the opportunity to do consequential governmental work.
But it was not to be. There was a lot of scrambling around after the election as people tried to figure out what would happen after Trump’s inauguration. Flynn thought he might be OK because his internship was unpaid, and there were many public pronouncements that the administration was concerned about saving money and efficiency. But on Jan. 24, four days after the inauguration, Flynn got an email that said his internship was being revoked.
For a while, his universe was upended. Summer jobs after the second year of law school are traditionally very important both for the experience and as a gateway to full-time jobs after graduation. But many law firms and other employers finished their hiring in the fall. Flynn had to scramble.
…this is an issue that many big firms, small firms, medium firms, plaintiff side, defense side are aligned on … it’s highlighted the unity and the potential for increased collaboration and understanding between practice areas and disciplines.
Yusuf Al-Bazian, third-year student at UC Law San Francisco
He got responses to his inquiries that he characterized as, “we’re really sympathetic to you and to the students in your position, but you know we just don’t have the resources to reopen hiring and we’ve already hired everyone.”
It was worrisome, but he prevailed and eventually got offers that will let him split his summer between two big law firms, one on the East Coast and one on the West. He jokes that while he was willing to work for the government for free, now he will be making money as a big firm summer associate.
Flynn decided to sign the amicus brief in support of Susman Godfrey because he thought he should do something to show that he was opposed to the targeting of law firms. He says, “I’m not generally a very activist type,” but it was “about the state of our profession as we become lawyers.”
He said, “anyone who committed themselves to the rule of law as their profession should be a little worried about what’s going on.” In his view, “this is a way for the administration to just deter anyone from challenging the government.”
Christina Ochoa is a second-year law student at UC Law Berkeley. She is co-chair of Berkeley’s chapter of the NPLA, one of the biggest in the country. She said that in helping to organize support for the amicus brief, “a big sentiment among students is people are just very scared to put their names on things.”
That is true especially for students who are vulnerable to retribution because of their immigration status. She said at UC Berkeley, “we’re at over 20 students who’ve had their visas revoked, which is just insane. It’s a really, really troubling time.” (After her interview, the administration announced the rollback of some student visa revocations.)
The amicus brief identifies the actual names of student signatories, not just their school and class. That represents a bolder step than the widely publicized open letter that associate lawyers at big law firms organized to urge their firms to stand up to the Trump administration,
The associate letter had attracted 1871 signatures as of Tuesday.
Ochoa said she is “very proud of the students who are stepping up and are putting their names on things and who are shouldering that load and taking that risk for those of us who can’t.”
For her, what is so disturbing about the executive orders and the settlements is that it threatens the ability of lawyers to advocate for clients and causes they care about. “If we can’t represent clients or advocate for the causes that we feel passionate about,” she asks, “then why are we even doing this?”
She adds, “It’s great to see that there’s so much agreement among the student body that this isn’t OK.”