From the outside, it appeared that Paul Weiss’ capitulation to Trump was a shameful act of cowardice. Yet, others followed, even though there were no Executive Orders issued against them and, as far as can be known, no intention or reason to do so. Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman, Simpson Thacher, and Cadwalader, all dropped to their knees before Trump, accepting his anti-DEI oversight and committing themselves to a hundred million plus in pro bono representation of Trump-supported causes.

Cowards? So it seems, but David Lat raised another possibility. A far darker possibility.

The latest deals came shortly after Trump openly mused in the Oval Office about forcing Biglaw firms to work on negotiating trade agreements with foreign nations or coal-leasing deals. Conscripting private firms in this way might strike critics of the administration as outlandish or even outrageous, but I can’t help wondering: considering how quickly firms are capitulating, how sure can we be that they’d refuse to comply with such demands, if faced with what Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp characterized in his now-famous firmwide email as an “existential” threat?

Sure, there are individual lawyers who have chosen principle over paychecks with a bunch of zeroes. Biglaw pays well. Very well. Indeed, a young lawyer I’ve mentored for years wrote me that he pulled his application to return to Skadden following a judicial clerkship because of the firm’s capitulation. Ironically, his other choice was to get a gig at Justice, which he no longer considers a path worthy of pursuit.

But what if the younger lawyers, and the few partner-level lawyers, who decided that they could not work for a law firm that dropped to its knees rather than fight missed the point? What if the Biglaw firms that hustled over to the White House even though there was no pending threat against them, were not capitulating at all, but were taking advantage of an opportunity to rid themselves of the feigned concern for DEI, the blight of pandering to their woke associates, and their pro bono activities for the poor and downtrodden when their true concerns favored the sort of corporate and organizational litigants that both favored Trump’s views and had been the staple of Biglaw billing that provided equity partners with very sweet and cushy lives?

Lat provides a running list of the names of people fleeing these firms for their “capitulation.”

At the same time as more firms are surrendering, we’re seeing more individual lawyers speaking out against the EOs—and quitting their firms over them. Joining Rachel Cohen and Thomas Sipp are fellow associates Andrew Silberstein, who resigned from Willkie in what Above the Law described as “epic fashion,” and Siunik Moradian, who departed from Simpson after condemning the firm for “bending the knee and kissing the ring of authoritarianism.”

And it’s no longer just associates who are heading for the exits. Steven Banks, who served as special counsel for pro bono at Paul Weiss, left the firm in order to resume working with nonprofits that help the homeless. Joseph Baio, the longest-tenured lawyer at Willkie—a former partner at the firm, who previously served on its executive committee—resigned as senior counsel, in order to “join the fight against governmental tyranny, unconstitutional decrees, and social injustice.”

Their condemnation by flight speaks loudly. But there are thousands of partners and associates in these firms. This handful of lawyers is, well, insignificant in the grand scheme of Biglaw. Even if a few hundred quit, thousands still remain. As Lat explains, leaving isn’t simple.

Here’s an obvious question for the (almost entirely anonymous) members of LFPU: “If you’re so troubled by what your firm is (or is not) doing, why not resign from the partnership in protest?” Chatterjee tackled this topic in a LinkedIn post, arguing that (1) changing law firms is complex and time-consuming process that can disrupt client representations, and (2) partners can often make a bigger difference by staying at their firms and advocating internally for charge.

Perhaps there is a simpler answer to the “why not quit” question: They’re okay with this. They actually agree with some, if not most, of this. They never really cared about diversity and only pretended to do so because it was the fashion and the baby lawyers needed to believe they cared. They never really wanted to do pro bono for the unwashed, but let the kiddies have their way so they wouldn’t feel bad about spending the rest of their time serving their corporate masters?

It’s hard to imagine that the managing partners and the management committees decided to ignore the will of the rest of the partnership and the mass of associates by kissing Trump’s ring when there was no “existential threat” to their existence. If it was the collective desire of these firms to stand firm against Trump rather than hand him $100 million or more, why do the opposite? Because maybe it wasn’t capitulation at all, but a chance for the partnership to return Biglaw to its roots.