Kirkland & Ellis Negotiates With White House to Avoid Executive Order

In late March and early April 2025, Kirkland & Ellis, the nation's highest-grossing law firm, entered talks with the Trump White House to avoid becoming the next target of a punitive executive order targeting law firms. The firm proactively reached out to the administration rather than waiting to be targeted, according to reporting at the time. The talks mattered as another example of how the threat of executive action was being used as leverage over major law firms, with the administration reportedly hoping to enlist prestigious firms to help negotiate trade deals in addition to extracting pro bono commitments and policy changes. The negotiations concluded on April 11, 2025, with Kirkland agreeing to provide $125 million in pro bono legal services to Trump-approved causes, while the EEOC dropped related workplace-discrimination investigations into the firm's diversity programs, following the same pattern of financial concessions exchanged for regulatory and executive-order relief seen across the legal industry that spring.