At least 11 companies are moving their business away from firms that have settled with Donald Trump’s White House, The Wall Street Journal first reported. Some are planning — or are already giving — more work to those that have been targeted by Trump or his administration but did not budge, according to the companies’ general counsels and other people familiar.
These companies include financial services provider Morgan Stanley, technology corporation Oracle, and others in the airline and pharmaceutical industries, according to The Wall Street Journal. Technology conglomerate Microsoft had also expressed skepticism for working with a firm that came to a deal, and fast food giant McDonald’s stopped being represented by another firm a few months before a trial.
The Wall Street Journal reported that general counsels have doubted whether they could trust a firm to negotiate deals and win their own cases in court if they did not resist demands from Trump.
It’s rather odd that they did not consider this consequence.
Do you imagine that the wimpy law firms will eventually need to rebrand? And, if so, I wonder if that thought has dawned on them yet.
Moreover, a similar consequence might await firms that caved-in and dropped support for DEI, I think.
Rebrand is tough. They’re named after the top equity partners lol - these folks gonna lie in whichever bed they choose to make
I honestly think they might be at such a competitive disadvantage that they just fail as businesses. More diversity in the ways that fall under DEI also leads to diversity of perspectives, aka inventiveness, which leads to diversity of tactics, aka adaptability.
Markets are centralised enough that adaptability, inventiveness and other things like this don’t really matter any more. In a free market, sure. On Wall Street?
If market dynamics mattered at all, Tesla would be bankrupt, and so would be Oracle, Microsoft and many others.
Treat this as untrustworthy anecdote since I can’t find the reference but I recall seeing an article recently where a few of the key partners have already split off and formed a new firm. I’d expect more like that based on my zero amount of expertise.
People who are okay with doing bad things, are usually okay with it because they think most people are okay with, or even do, the same things.
All they see is “high profile client = $$$” and nothing else, completely ignoring that trump famously never pays.