The Trump administration’s crackdown on lawyers it does not like is something people thought “could never happen in the United States”, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA) has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Michelle Behnke, who was in London for a gathering on the safety and protection of lawyers, said the ABA was used to dispensing advice to associations in other countries but the tables had turned to an extent.
Since taking office, Donald Trump and his government have placed restrictions on some lawyers and law firms, including their ability to freely represent clients, mostly because they have done legal work that the president has opposed or they have been associated with prosecutors who investigated him.
Among the tactics adopted have been terminating lawyers’ security clearances, severing firms’ government contracts, refraining from hiring certain firms’ employees for federal government jobs and limiting lawyers’ access to federal buildings.
In response, the ABA filed a lawsuit in June asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s “unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms”.
Behnke, who rubbed shoulders with lawyers from countries such as Turkey and Zimbabwe at the event hosted by the Bar Council and the Law Society of England and Wales, said: “People are aware of the executive orders against law firms to suggest that no one in a law firm could enter any federal building – that would mean that you would not be able to practise law. So that’s an assault or a threat against law firms, and as effective as physical threats.
“People maybe a year or two ago might have said that could never happen in the United States. [This shows] no place is immune, no place is perfect.”
She said the idiosyncrasy of the situation was not lost on counterparts from other countries she had met in London, who had taken sustenance from the role reversal.
“I’ve met with lawyers from around the world,” Behnke said. “They have both given support and encouragement, suggested that they believe the ABA is taking the right steps in … bringing suit.
“We are often the one coming to the support and aid of other countries and I think some of the other countries are realising that they can also return the aid and that actually buoys them and makes them know that their role as attorneys, their law societies, are equally important.”
Trump’s Maga movement has pushed the US towards more antagonistic relationships with other countries but Behnke has drawn on the “very comforting” international support, which she said had been a reminder that “you should not be myopic and only focused on what’s happening in your country. We can learn from each other.”
Nine big US law firms capitulated in the face of the threatened sanctions, striking deals to collectively provide almost $1bn in free legal services to the Trump administration or causes it supports.
Others have fought back, successfully challenging executive orders imposing sanctions, as has the ABA. As a result, the largest voluntary lawyer organisation in the US, with about 170,000 dues-paying members, has been called a “snooty” organisation of “leftist lawyers” and accused of illegal diversity efforts by the White House.
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But Behnke is clear on the importance of workplace diversity. “I think issues around gender equality within the profession, diversity, equity and inclusion – and I use the full words, as opposed to the letters [DEI], because the letters themselves have become toxic – are all part and parcel of the rule of law,” she said.
“If the legal profession reflects the people we serve, the clients we serve, the communities we live in, that’s key and that helps people understand the rule of law and the importance and gives people trust and confidence in the systems. As a profession, we have tended to lag a little bit behind on some of these issues, not for lack of working … I think a black woman talking about it is pretty important right now.”
She added that while “you put 10 lawyers in a room, you’re going to get 11 different opinions”, when it came to the rule of law there was “absolute unanimity” in understanding its importance and the chaos that reigns in its absence.
When asked why lawyers were being singled out in so many countries, Behnke paraphrased – appropriately, given her location – the words of England’s greatest playwright in Henry VI Part 2.
“I think the times lend themselves discord and law and lawyers are the ones that hold people to account,” she said. “Shakespeare [said] if you want anarchy, first kill all the lawyers. It really was an understanding that lawyers are perhaps an impediment to that anarchy and that ability to take over or disrupt the rule of law. So I’m not terribly surprised that we are a bit of a target.”
