New York Bill Aims to Exclude Pro Bono Work Lawyers Do for Trump From Bar Requirements
“This legislation aims to send a clear message that bending the knee is never the right answer when dealing with fascists, and that we need New York’s lawyers to be champions, always, for the rule of law”
The bill’s sponsor refers to the Trump administration as fascists. She should take a look into a mirror.
Bloomberg Law reports:
NY Bill Aims to Exclude Trump Work From Bar Pro Bono Hours (2)
Free legal work for President Donald Trump wouldn’t count towards pro bono legal hours required for New York bar admission under a new bill quickly gaining steam in Albany.
The measure, printed Thursday in the waning weeks of New York’s legislative session, exempts free legal work “performed pursuant to an agreement with the federal government” from the required 50 hours law graduates must show to become barred.
“This legislation aims to send a clear message that bending the knee is never the right answer when dealing with fascists, and that we need New York’s lawyers to be champions, always, for the rule of law,” said the bill sponsor, Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Manhattan Democrat.
If passed, the measure would present another challenge for firms that have struck deals to provide free legal work for the president. Law school graduates regularly begin jobs before they’re barred as lawyers and rely partly on their employers to help them meet New York’s bar admission requirements including pro bono hours.
Nine of the country’s largest law firms—a group that includes Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden, and Simpson Thacher—pledged $940 million in legal services for causes Trump supports, such as combating anti-semitism, assisting veterans, and “ensuring fairness” in the justice system. They made deals to avoid executive orders like those aimed at other firms with ties to lawyers who have investigated or sued the president and to resolve federal probes into diversity recruiting programs.
Trump wants to use the firms to defend police officers accused of misconduct, work on tariff issues, and help revive the coal industry, the president said. Several of the firms’ leaders said in internal communications that they would retain the right to choose the clients and matters they take on.
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Comments
It is just me, or is the headline of this article worded oddly?
It isn’t just you that headline didn’t make a bit of sense
This appears to be a bill of attainder – an attempt to prohibit an action via legislation without the involvement of the judiciary.
It’s not a bill of attainder, because it’s targeted at the federal government, not at President Trump.
Had it named Trump it might still not have been one, because it wouldn’t directly impose a penalty on him. But it could have been interpreted as one, since it would discourage pro bono work for him and him alone.
It does take some serious deconstruction.
Better would have been: New York Bill Excludes Pro-Trump Work from Satisfying Lawyer’s Pro-Bono Quotas
But it’s not just pro-Trump work (whatever that means). It’s any work done without charge on behalf of the federal government. Do these people think before they write bills?
That’s intentional, so it won’t risk being held to be a bill of attainder. For the next four years the federal government is Trump. Assuming this passes, once he’s out of office they intend to repeal it.
You have just argued that this is a bill of attainder. The identifiable group this bill targets are those who seek Bar admission and have donated their time to the current administration. But then again, I would argue that any requirement to donate time pro Bono regardless of who receives the donation is a form of slavery.
This is fascist. The sponsors and anyone who voters for it should be disbarred and if the NY bar refuses. well, I don’t know what penalties can be brought against it. De-certification maybe?
Disbarring legislators for how they vote and what bills they sponsor?! That can’t possibly be legal. And if it were legal it would be sure to be used against Republicans.
In an effort to get Trump, their language inadvertently acknowledges all the performative knee bending five minutes ago means exactly what it looked like: kowtowing to fascists.