Finance Associate Resigns from Major Law Firm Over Failure to Resist DJT

Rachel Cohen, the third year finance associate who organized an open letter signed by hundreds of law firm associated urging “big law” firms to stand up to Donald Trump, publicly announced her two week notice to leave Skadden if it is unwilling to stand up for its profession.

The key portion of her open letter said:

We call on our employers, large American law firms, to defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of ‘partisan actors,’ a group that seems to be synonymous with those the president feels have wronged him,” the letter states. “Our politics and feelings about the industry and its path forward are varied. But we are united in our condemnation of the administration’s intimidation tacts, viewpoint discrimination, and attempts to weaponize the executive [branch] against the rule of law.

Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way. That has not yet been the case, but it still very much can be. It is easy to be afraid of being the first to speak. We are removing that barrier; we are speaking. Now it is our employers’ turn.

Her conditional resignation letter said:

The firm has been given time and opportunity to do the right thing. Thus far, we have not. This is a moment that demands urgency. Whether we are failing to meet it because we are unprepared or because we don’t wish to is irrelevant to me—and to the world—where the outcome is the same. If we were going to resist, we would have done so already. If we were not going to respond to the EEOC (a refusal that would be fully legal), the firm would have already told us.

This is the first firmwide email that has been sent on this topic. What. Are. We. Doing.

Colleagues, if you question if it is as bad as you think it is, it is ten times worse. Whether what we measure is the cowardice in face of lost profits, or the proximity to authoritarianism, or the trauma inflicted on our colleagues who are nonwhite, or the disappointment that I feel in this moment, take what you suspect and multiply it by a factor of ten. Act accordingly. I recognize not everyone is positioned as I am, and cannot act the same way. But do not recruit for this firm if they cannot protect their employees. Do not pretend that what is happening is normal or excusable. It isn’t.

Click here for more about the open letter.

Click here for more about her resignation letter.