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Late last week, the White House issued a memo ordering the attorney general to seek disciplinary action against attorneys whose conduct “appears to violate professional conduct rules” or who work on “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” matters against the government. The potential punishments for lawyers include losing their license to practice law, and losing business related to government contracts or national security.
Who could object to cracking down on unethical lawyers, right? Except it quickly became clear to me that this order had nothing to do with promoting legal ethics, and everything to do with attacking lawyers and law firms for representing clients that President Donald Trump has a grudge against.
The tell is in the examples of “unethical conduct” listed in the memo:
- Attorney Marc Elias, who represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is mentioned by name for his involvement in what became known as the Steele dossier, containing allegations against Trump and his connections to Russia. A Florida judge tossed out Trump’s lawsuit against Clinton and others over the dossier, saying he was “seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.”
- The immigration bar and “powerful Big Law pro bono practices,” which the White House alleged “frequently coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when [seeking asylum].”
The memo also wasn’t released in a vacuum: It came out only days after Trump targeted specific law firms with extensive ties to his political opponents for special punishment, including a firm that has done pro bono legal work for Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two indictments of Trump. The Trump administration has attacked other institutions he believes are his adversaries, like the media and universities.
I have been a lawyer for nearly 20 years, most recently as an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project and as a part of efforts by former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign to protect voters last year. I therefore knew immediately what message the White House intended to send lawyers: If you represent a client who challenges Trump or his policies, the government will accuse you of unethical conduct and end your legal career.
Understood that way, the order’s potential consequences should alarm every American. Far from upholding legal ethics, it has the potential to warp the American legal system so that Trump’s political opponents — or ordinary citizens harmed by actions his administration takes — cannot use the courts to hold him accountable.
To see why, you have to understand what makes the American court system work. It is often described as adversarial because it relies on two adversaries (a plaintiff and a defendant) making opposing arguments in front of an impartial judge or jury.
More than anything else, it resembles a boxing match, where two contestants pummel each other in a ring until one of them defeats their opponent. But instead of settling a match through physical strength and skill, the winner in the courtroom is supposed to be the lawyer with the stronger argument.
This adversarial process spurs both sides to make their best arguments, with the stronger argument (like the stronger boxer) eventually emerging triumphant. But in order to work, the system requires that both sides have the best lawyers they can find bringing all their talents to bear on the case. Near the very beginning of the profession’s model rules of conduct, it describes a lawyer’s mission in part as “zealously assert[ing] the client’s position under the rules of the adversary system.” A lawyer’s role is so fundamental that the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that the government must pay for defense lawyers in criminal trials where the defendant cannot afford one.
That legal system is one of our most important checks on the power of government. Time and again, lawyers and courts have served as a crucial shield against violations of civil rights and abuse of power. In the 20th Century, for instance, a series of important cases desegregated public schools, protected the rights of Americans to voice unpopular opinions and practice religious beliefs, shielded the press from the government’s efforts to prevent reporting on government wrongdoing in wartime, and ordered the president to comply with the Constitution and the law.
I’ve seen this firsthand in my career here in Texas and elsewhere. At the Texas Civil Rights Project, our immigration attorneys worked night and day to collect evidence when the first Trump administration began separating migrant children from their parents. The following year, we went to court to block efforts to prevent naturalized citizens from voting. In 2024, the Harris campaign went to court many times to defend voters against efforts by Trump and his allies to make it harder to vote.
None of these cases would have happened if there hadn’t been lawyers willing to fight for politically controversial positions against powerful enemies. But if lawyers have to choose between representing people and causes that the government dislikes, and supporting themselves and their families, many will undoubtedly choose the latter. Their clients — often poor or vulnerable people — will be the first to suffer.
We all benefit when lawyers can freely champion civil rights, because those rights protect not just the parties in one case but the rest of us, too. When the government abuses its power, we are all at risk of being the next victim unless a lawyer can take on a client who wants to push back. How would you feel if your rights were violated, but a lawyer told you: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you because I might lose my job”?
Lawyers, I must admit, are not the most popular people in the world. But their work is vital to ensure that the government obeys the law and respects our civil rights. There is a strong public interest in making sure they can continue to do that work without having to fear for their livelihood. Trump’s order is therefore not merely an attack on them – it’s an attack on all the rest of us, too.
