"that the battle over the executive order is not a fight of left versus right, of Democrat versus Republican. Waxman told me, “Paul’s undertaking this representation reflects in the clearest way possible that there is really no daylight across the ideological spectrum about how utterly unconstitutional and inappropriate and damaging these executive orders are to the rule of law and to the adversary system of justice that is central to American democracy.”
“The Conservative Lawyer Defending a Firm from Donald Trump”
“Paul Clement complained that Big Law was becoming “increasingly woke.” Now he’s defending one firm’s right to do just that.
From their first day of law school, lawyers are trained to anticipate problems and prepare in advance. For the Washington law firm WilmerHale, the problem before it was not hard to spot. President Donald Trump had pursued one venerable D.C. firm, Covington & Burling, with an executive order that revoked security clearances for lawyers representing the former special counsel Jack Smith. A second executive order, against Perkins Coie, went even further, restricting the firm’s lawyers from entering government buildings and threatening the government contracts of its clients. The dual goal of these orders was clear: to punish law firms that had dared to cross Trump and to intimidate others that might stand up to him. WilmerHale was an obvious next target. It had strong ties to the Democratic Party (it represented the Kamala Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2024 election); did extensive pro-bono work, much on behalf of liberal causes; and, perhaps of most intense interest to the President, has harbored attorneys whom Trump perceives as enemies, including the former special counsel (and lifelong Republican) Robert Mueller.
The firm’s next move was equally obvious: hire Paul Clement, the leading conservative advocate before the Supreme Court, to represent it. Seth Waxman, a WilmerHale partner who served as Solicitor General under Bill Clinton, called Clement, who was Solicitor General under George W. Bush, to see if he would take the case.
Securing Clement on the side of WilmerHale sent a powerful signal to judges—including the Justices of the Supreme Court, who seem all but certain to eventually consider the case—that the battle over the executive order is not a fight of left versus right, of Democrat versus Republican. Waxman told me, “Paul’s undertaking this representation reflects in the clearest way possible that there is really no daylight across the ideological spectrum about how utterly unconstitutional and inappropriate and damaging these executive orders are to the rule of law and to the adversary system of justice that is central to American democracy.” Clement declined to be interviewed. (Washington being a small town, he and my husband are working together on a separate legal issue.)”
