Since the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling, and especially since Donald Trump's anti-DEI campaign, many law firms have swiftly moved to alter or dismantle their programs promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI. So where does that leave people like Oyango Snell, a full-throated, unapologetic advocate of DEI in the legal industry? Snell is a former law professor who now runs a legal operations professional group, and he joins our podcast, On The Merits, to talk about how the pr...
Jul 01, 2025•15 min
The bar exam is in a state of flux. A new "NexGen" test is about to debut, while several states now offer licenses to attorneys who haven't taken the exam at all. These bar exam alternatives, many of which originated as emergency pandemic measures, are proving successful in smaller states, like South Dakota and New Hampshire, and even some larger ones, like Arizona and Oregon. But a nationwide bar exam alternative is not on the horizon, and large corporate firms have shown little willingness to ...
Jun 26, 2025•19 min
Don't call it "flyover country." The firm Foley & Lardner has seen success opening offices in mid-tier cities such as Nashville, Raleigh, N.C., and Salt Lake City over the past four years. On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Roy Strom speaks with Foley's chairman and CEO, Daljit Doogal, about why he's taken his firm beyond the traditional Big Law power centers of California, New York, and D.C. He also talks about the challenges of convincing the attorneys you wa...
Jun 24, 2025•18 min
We don't know who is running ads on podcasts advocating for anti-litigation finance legislation. But, given how many enemies the practice has among conservatives and big business, the list of potential culprits is huge. Bloomberg Law reporter Emily R. Siegel wrote a story about these podcast ads, which call for restrictions on third parties who fund lawsuits in exchange for a cut of any awards they generate. The ads failed to disclose who was behind them as required by law and were quickly pulle...
Jun 17, 2025•13 min
It's never a good look for a law firm to lose partners in bunches, and that's what's been happening at Paul Weiss in the past few weeks. Some of the firm's high-profile litigators have announced their departures, following the deal it struck with the Trump administration to avoid a punitive executive order. Ironically, the firm negotiated the White House agreement—which includes a pledge to provide $40 million in free legal services on shared priority causes—in part to avoid a run on partners. O...
Jun 12, 2025•18 min
Brad Bondi, a lawyer at Paul Hastings and brother of the current Attorney General, failed yesterday in his bid to become president of the DC bar association. But criticisms and attacks from conservatives on these legal groups, at both the state and national level, will likely continue. That's one of the takeaways from this week's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, in which Bloomberg Law reporter Tatyana Monnay talks about why Bondi tried to seize control of the DC bar and why his campaign dr...
Jun 10, 2025•15 min
One would think that the Trump administration's pullback on enforcement across the federal government would mean fewer clients for attorneys to defend. But that would be overlooking another important law enforcer in our system: state attorneys general. Karl Racine and Jason Downs, both partners at the firm Hogan Lovells, are bolstering their practice specializing in helping clients under scrutiny by state AGs, many of whom are actively trying to fill enforcement gaps left by the federal governme...
Jun 03, 2025•17 min
Being a summer associate at a law firm can be tricky. On the one hand, you want to be remembered; on the other hand, you don't want to be remembered for the wrong reasons. On today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, we hear from Kate Reder Sheikh, a partner in the associate practice group at Major, Lindsey & Africa, about the pitfalls that summer associates can fall into—from over-imbibing at company functions to trying too hard to get face time with a partner. She says, in the legal w...
May 29, 2025•14 min
Dozens of law firms have sought to de-emphasize, or outright kill, their diversity initiatives since the Supreme Court's 2023 affirmative action decision—and especially since Donald Trump retook office this year and started issuing punitive executive orders that mention them. However, one firm is now doing the opposite. Susman Godfrey announced last week it would expand its annual prize awarded to law students of color, even though this program was specifically called out by Trump in his executi...
May 20, 2025•14 min
We're starting to see the impact of a string of deals reached over the last two months between President Donald Trump and top law firms. Some firms appear to be moving on—and even thriving—after pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services on causes backed by the White House to avoid punitive executive orders like those Trump has lobbed at others. At least three firms that made deals are primed to cash in on Saudi Arabia's plan to invest $1 trillion in the US, thanks to their ...
May 15, 2025•14 min
The Trump administration's attacks on law firms are having ripple effects on the general counsel whose companies employ those firms. Top attorneys at many large companies may be considering whether to switch the firms they use as outside counsel, according to Bloomberg Law reporter Brian Baxter. In some cases, GCs don't want to work with a firm that's under attack from President Donald Trump; in other cases, they may feel uncomfortable that the firm struck a deal with the White House. On this ep...
May 13, 2025•21 min
Shortly after law firms started striking deals for free legal services with the White House, Bloomberg Law reporter Meghan Tribe appeared on our podcast, On The Merits, to talk about how much ambiguity there was around what the firms were agreeing to and how these agreements would be enforced. Now, Tribe and her colleague Brian Baxter have seen a copy of one of these deals but many unanswered questions remain. However, we do have more concrete insight into the separate deals firms struck with th...
May 08, 2025•16 min
The legal industry is in a state of tremendous flux after just 100 days of the second Trump administration, with the biggest law firms in the country under attack and the Department of Justice's independence in question. Three Bloomberg Law reporters covering three different beats teamed up to write a story chronicling everything that's been happening in the legal world since Donald Trump retook office earlier this year and where we might be heading in the months to come. Those three reporters—R...
May 01, 2025•19 min
Many students at elite law schools end up working in Big Law for at least a spell. The Trump administration's attacks on the industry, and deals with some of its top players, are making the choice of where to start their careers much more complicated. Students are stuck between two very uncertain options: go to a firm that struck a deal with the White House, despite concerns about a lack of principles; or, go to a firm that's fighting Trump in court, despite concerns about the firm remaining fin...
Apr 29, 2025•13 min
Judge James Boasberg began the process of holding Trump administration officials in contempt of court last week as he struggles to get them to follow his orders around the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. That contempt process was halted a few days later by an appellate court, but Boasberg's actions raised questions about how it might play out if he or another federal judge did eventually fine or attempt to jail recalcitrant executive branch officials. Could Justice Department law...
Apr 22, 2025•20 min
Like a run on a bank, law firms can quickly collapse if a few rainmakers pick up and take their books of business elsewhere—a vicious cycle that's hard to stop once it gets going. That's the takeaway from a law review article by Yale professor John Morley. He says a partner exodus can happen quickly because there's a huge financial incentive not to be one of the last partners remaining at a firm. That dynamic is on many partners' minds right now as they debate whether to fight the White House's ...
Apr 15, 2025•24 min
Law firms are striking deals with President Trump to avoid getting hit with a punitive executive order, and all of these deals include pledges of tens of millions of dollars in pro bono legal work. In this quickly changing landscape, it appears that the biggest law firm in the country, Kirkland & Ellis, is considering one of these commitments to the White House. However, the details of how these deals will work in practice are scant to nonexistent. How will the legal work be tracked? What qu...
Apr 08, 2025•18 min
"I cannot imagine a worse deal than the one that Skadden came away with." That's the opinion of one of the law firm's own associates, Rachel Cohen. The Chicago-based finance lawyer has grabbed the spotlight by criticizing Skadden and Paul Weiss for reaching agreements with President Donald Trump as he targets Big Law through a series of executive orders. She's also slammed others for staying quiet, even as three major firms fight Trump directives in court. "The industry is not uniting," said Coh...
Apr 01, 2025•26 min
The US legal industry was already in a tough spot before President Donald Trump started attacking Big Law firms. Gloomy economic conditions and tariff-related uncertainty quickly tanked law firm leaders' expectations for a rebound that followed Trump's election. They're looking to stay off the president's target list in a wave of executive orders, while navigating a slowdown in deals activity and across practice groups. "From cautiously optimistic to cautious." That's how Gretta Rusanow describe...
Mar 27, 2025•16 min
President Donald Trump has targeted major law firms in his second term in unprecedented ways. He hit three Big Law firms with executive orders that pose potentially existential threats to those firms. Then on March 21, the Trump administration issued a broad memo targeting any lawyer who files “frivolous, unreasonable, and even vexatious litigation against the United States.” On this podcast episode we’re talking about yet another way the administration is going after firms. Andrea Lucas, the ac...
Mar 25, 2025•18 min
After Donald Trump won the presidential election, dealmakers at corporations—and the Big Law lawyers that represent them—were optimistic about the prospects for increased corporate mergers and acquisitions. But the first two months of 2025 have fallen far short of expectations. Not only have deal tallies been lower than hoped, they are the lowest in five years. On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law's Mahira Dayal talks about what this slowdown means for law firms. Also, Ho...
Mar 20, 2025•20 min
The White House has now hit several of the largest law firms in the world with directives that strip their attorneys of security clearances and order federal agencies to scrap contracts they hold with the firms' clients. Paul Weiss is the most recent target, but there's reason to believe it won't be the last. Bloomberg Law reporter Tatyana Monnay says it's now clear that "there's no firm too big to be attacked." In an executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie, Trump said he was looking int...
Mar 17, 2025•22 min
Kirkland & Ellis, the world's largest law firm by revenue, brought in more than $100 million last year from just one of its clients: Blackstone Inc. That's more than double the amount Kirkland earned from the private equity giant in 2023. The dollar amount itself is eye-popping, but also notable is that we even know this information at all. Blackstone was required to disclose the payments in investor filings late last month because a Kirkland partner, Reg Brown, sits on its board. On this ep...
Mar 11, 2025•13 min
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a mainstay of corporate culture for the last quarter-century, and has cost companies millions, sometimes even billions, of dollars in fines. And that’s before you start counting the lawyers’ fees. This law, used to prevent US businesses from engaging in bribery to win foreign business, has seen a major uptick in enforcement over the last 25 years. And, over that period, it has become a major revenue driver for elite law firms. Some say that the law keep...
Mar 06, 2025•21 min
Houston's legal market wasn't always one of the most competitive arenas in Big Law. But today, 14 of the 15 largest law firms by revenue have an office in Space City. The market's growth has mirrored the explosion of the country's energy industry over the past decade or so. And the competition among law firms continues to evolve, as the biggest firms fight for their share of a market once dominated by local firms. On this episode of On the Merits, Bloomberg Law’s Roy Strom spoke with Nick Dhesi,...
Mar 04, 2025•20 min
The federal workforce has been hit with a wrecking ball since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency started its campaign to fire and furlough federal employees. Meanwhile, law firms are seeing a flood of resumes from attorneys who have lost their jobs and from lawyers who want to leave behind the new instability of federal employment. However, law firms have limits to how many attorneys they can hire, especially when those attorneys don’t come with a book of business. So what should go...
Feb 25, 2025•21 min
The sports business is booming. You’ve probably seen the headlines. An NFL team sold for $6 billion, and private equity is pouring money into almost anything that involves a ball or a stick. For law firms, that means opportunity. More Big Law firms view the business of sports as a target for the types of megadeals that drive revenue. Naturally, there's a lot more competition coming for a practice area that was once dominated by only a handful of repeat players. On this episode of On The Merits, ...
Feb 20, 2025•15 min
Delaware has been the US corporate capital for about a century. But a wave of high-profile departures—amid a barrage of attacks from Elon Musk—has many members of the state's corporate community worried about the future. Although the world's richest man has been trying to provoke a corporate exodus for more than a year, the increasingly powerful Musk isn't the only critic of recent Delaware court rulings. Other stakeholders, such as the state's influential corporate defense bar, also say Delawar...
Feb 18, 2025•16 min
At its height, the influential SCOTUSBlog provided Supreme Court coverage that drew comparisons to the comprehensive way ESPN reports on sports. But while the blog was becoming required reading for attorneys, law students, and journalists, its founder was allegedly racking up millions in gambling and tax debts. High-profile Washington attorney Tom Goldstein was indicted last month on federal charges allegedly tied to an ultra-high-stakes poker hobby involving billionaires, professional gamblers,...
Feb 13, 2025•16 min
Big law firms are increasingly feeling pressure to grow, and many use mergers with other firms to expand. But a recent Bloomberg Law analysis reveals that about two-thirds of the 18 largest mergers within the past 15 years saw slower revenue growth than their competitors. Bloomberg Law reporter Meghan Tribe joins the podcast to talk about why firms merge, what challenges they face, and what the most successful mergers look like. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a ca...
Feb 11, 2025•15 min
