Milbank Reaches $100 Million Pro Bono Deal With Trump Administration

On April 2, 2025, President Trump announced that law firm Milbank LLP had agreed to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal services for causes such as assisting veterans and combating antisemitism, ending diversity-based hiring practices, and including partners of varied political views on its pro bono committee, in order to avoid a punitive executive order similar to those issued against other firms. The deal followed the same template set by Paul Weiss and Skadden weeks earlier, reflecting a pattern in which large law firms opted to negotiate financial and policy concessions rather than risk executive action that could threaten security clearances or federal contracts tied to their attorneys and clients. Legal-ethics commentators continued to describe the arrangement as a form of coerced settlement rather than a voluntary charitable commitment, warning that using the threat of executive orders to extract concessions from private firms, without any judicial finding of wrongdoing, set a troubling precedent for the independence of the legal profession.