It’s sometimes hard to see a critical moral and political choice even when it lands in your lap. But some people are blessed (or cursed) with the vision to see it way in advance. When Paul Weiss negotiated a deal to provide Trump with $40 million worth of pro bono services, Rachel Cohen, a young associate at another very large and prestigious firm, saw what was coming–intense pressure on the most visible firms to abandon basic principles of legal ethics and responsibility to protect their bottom line. The Trump Administration was determined to punish firms that represented clients and causes that Trump didn’t like, and firms that employed people who had investigated Trump and his, uh, associates.

Lawyers claim to believe that everyone is entitled to zealous legal representation, even people they may not like. (John Adams famously represented the British soldiers who fired into the crowd at the Boston Massacre.) Certainly, American law is compromised if political authorities can deny people they don’t like effective legal representation.

Cohen, a finance associate with nearly three years in at Skadden Arps and a Harvard Law degree, saw that she was sitting on the tracks with a freight train full of moral dilemma approaching fast. She gave notice–conditionally, along with an explanation, and an ask. Alarmed that lawyers will be reluctant to represent anyone at odds with the administration, and she called upon Skadden and other large firms to stand up for the rule of law. She posted her revocable resignation on her LinkedIn page.

For an associate to threaten to quit is a big deal. Getting hired at one of these large firms is extremely competitive. Associates work long hours and make a lot of money, particularly helpful in paying off the expensive high status law degrees they earned (and paid for). Some work to succeed on a partner track and build a career in corporate law. Others work to develop expertise and make connections that provide the foundation for other legal careers. Giving up such a position is a serious cost.

Cohen called for Skadden to support Perkins Coie, which was fighting Trump’s punitive Executive Orders in court. She also posted a broader letter for big law, predicting that once one law firm cut an independent deal with Trump, others would follow. (This turned out to be correct.) The letter asked associates to pressure their senior colleagues, their employers, to fight back. At this writing 1,700 associates at large law firms had signed–at least identifying the firms that employed them.

Skadden responded pretty quickly, blocking Cohen’s access to the firm’s communications, as she explained on TikTok. Not long afterward, the firm negotiated its own deal with Trump, promising $100 million in pro bono services. No surprise, the Trump administration sought out additional big firms to shake down. Some law firms are fighting back, contesting the orders in court, and winning early procedural victories; others are cutting quick deals with the Administration to protect themselves.

It’s an ongoing battle, and it’s an open question whether pressure from young associates will affect the large firms’ decisions. A few other associates have left Skadden and other cooperating firms, and other letters of protest are circulating, including one signed by Harvard Law alumni who want to support the rule of law. Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, has been tracking different strands of resistance on her bluesky feed.

Meanwhile, Rachel Cohen is using the attention of the moment to explain, again and again, why this moment is critical and why lawyers have an obligation to do more. (Read the interview in ABAJournal.) Her resignation letter, recalling the flights of imagination and reflection that good teachers promote when teaching about historical horrors, should evoke a moral reckoning for lawyers, to be sure, but for the rest of us as well. We all imagine that we would have sided with the heroes when we page through texts about evils like slavery or genocide, but most people didn’t.

Most of us wouldn’t have thought powerful resistance would come from a finance associate at a large corporate law firm or, for that matter, an Acting US Attorney in the Federalist Society. But Rachel Cohen and Danielle Sassoon are heroes and exemplars at this point in resistance, even if they’re not marching or carrying signs. Effective activism takes many different forms. But the first step, they realized, is recognizing the moral dilemma that most of us have been able to ignore.