Last week, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sent letters to 20 law firms, including four with Australian presences, seeking information about their DEI-related employment practices.

Acting chair Andrea Lucas said: “The EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head, including in our nation’s elite law firms. No one is above the law – and certainly not the private bar.”

This latest move by the Trump administration follows its targeting of BigLaw firms since the January inauguration.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has signed various executive orders targeting BigLaw firms in the US, including: removing security clearances and restricting access to federal buildings for lawyers at Perkins Coie LLP (which represented Hilary Clinton’s 2016 campaign); Covington & Burling LLP (which provided advice to former special counsel Jack Smith, who had led federal investigations into the returned president); and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (for filing proceedings against individuals that participated in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021).

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Those orders also prevent government contractors from working with these firms.

The order signed by Trump against Paul Weiss was particularly and brazenly personal, noting that “in 2022, [the firm] hired unethical attorney Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and who, according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me”.

As of the afternoon of Friday, 21 March (when this story was filed), the executive order against Paul Weiss has been rescinded. As reported by AP, the firm has pledged to review its hiring practices and to provide tens of millions of dollars in free legal services to support certain White House initiatives.

Joint statement from international legal associations

Amid such developments, the Law Council of Australia signed a joint statement of national and international legal professional associations expressing dismay at the recent actions by the United States government targeting legal professionals at both the international and domestic levels.

Other signatories include the Law Society of England and Wales, the German Federal Bar, Paris Bar, Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.

In the statement, the associations convey their collective “dismay” at various actions taken by the Trump administration, including: imposing sanctions on ICC personnel and their immediate family members; instructing federal prosecutors to drop their corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams where there was “no legal justification for dismissing the case”; the aforementioned attacks on prominent US law firms; the issuing of a memo from the US Federal Trade Commission denouncing the American Bar Association (ABA), for issuing its own statement denouncing the “disturbing hostile environment that now exists for legal professionals in the country, which has resulted in reported personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for Justice Department lawyers and assistant US attorneys simply for doing their job”.

In accordance with principle 16 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (UN Basic Principles), the signatories wrote, “lawyers must be able to perform all their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference; and shall not suffer, or be threatened with, prosecution or administrative, economic or other sanctions for any action taken in accordance with recognised professional duties, standards and ethics”.

Furthermore, the legal associations continued, “lawyers shall not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes as a result of discharging their functions”.

“The actions outlined above, in respect of legal professionals at the ICC and those operating at the domestic level, demonstrate a contempt for the independence of the legal profession and violate longstanding international standards to ensure legal professionals can conduct their vital work without interference.

“Lawyers must be able to represent their clients without fear of retaliation and must not be punished because of who their clients are. The independence of the legal profession is fundamental to ensure respect for human rights and is a crucial element of the rule of law,” the letter said.

The signatories thus called on the Trump administration to rescind the executive order imposing sanctions on ICC personnel and their immediate families, “immediately halt all acts of intimidation, hindrance or harassment of legal professionals and any improper interference with their work”, and ensure respect for the fundamental principles enshrined in the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers that protect legal professionals and ensure they can perform their professional duties without undue interference.

The associations also defended the role of the ABA as a non-partisan organisation.

The joint statement can be read here.