Wall Street Journal: “At a recent luncheon at Cipriani in Midtown Manhattan, a top lawyer for Citadel delivered a message to leaders of some of the country’s biggest law firms. Brooke Cucinella told them that the hedge-fund company likes to work with law firms that aren’t afraid of a fight. Cucinella, head of litigation and regulatory inquiries at the business headed by Republican megadonor Ken Griffin, made no mention of politics. But some of the lawyers in attendance took her remarks as reference to a controversy that has been roiling the legal industry. Some of the listed attendees worked for firms that had cut deals with the White House to avoid punitive executive orders by President Trump. Others were at law firms that had gone to court to fight them. Support for the law firms that didn’t make deals has been growing inside the offices of corporate executives.

At least 11 big companies are moving work away from law firms that settled with the administration or are giving—or intend to give—more business to firms that have been targeted but refused to strike deals, according to general counsels at those companies and other people familiar with those decisions. Among them are technology giant Oracle, investment bank Morgan Stanley, an airline and a pharmaceutical company. Microsoft expressed reservations about working with a firm that struck a deal, and another such firm stopped representing McDonald’s in a case a few months before a scheduled trial.  In interviews, general counsels expressed concern about whether they could trust law firms that struck deals to fight for them in court and in negotiating big deals if they weren’t willing to stand up for themselves against Trump. The general counsel of a manufacturer of medical supplies said that if firms facing White House pressure “don’t have a hard line,” they don’t have any line at all. Since late February, Trump has issued a half-dozen executive orders that direct agencies to remove law firms’ security clearances, limit access to federal buildings and remove their clients’ government contracts, citing connections between those firms and the president’s enemies. Trump has said many law firms have weaponized the legal system to hamper the work of the administration…”