Skadden Arps faces mounting political pressure over its conflict of interest concerns tied to its deal with the Trump administration and its simultaneous legal work for Intel.
Senators Richard Blumenthal and Adam Schiff, along with Representative Jamie Raskin, sent a letter to Skadden executive partner Jeremy London demanding an explanation for the firm’s conduct.
The letter, notably the third such communication from the lawmakers, requests a response by August 4, though Skadden’s track record of engagement on this matter offers little encouragement.
The central concern is that Skadden advised Intel (INTC) on granting the Commerce Department a 10 percent equity stake in the company while simultaneously performing free legal work for that same department.
The arrangement raises serious questions about whether Skadden can serve two clients whose interests are directly intertwined in a major government transaction of this scale.
Skadden is one of nine large law firms that reached settlement agreements with the Trump administration rather than contest executive orders that critics described as unconstitutional attempts to bring the legal profession to heel.
Several firms, including Perkins Coie, Jenner and Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey, chose instead to sue the administration and have repeatedly prevailed in court over the executive orders.
Paul Weiss became the first major firm to settle, agreeing to $40 million in pro bono services and the elimination of its DEI programmes just six days after Trump’s executive order was issued.
Skadden went further, committing $100 million in pro bono work preemptively, before any executive order targeting the firm had even been issued, alongside a pledge to fund at least five Skadden Fellows annually.
That fellowship commitment carried its own consequences, as it promptly cost the Skadden Foundation its executive director following the announcement of the deal.
Willkie Farr and Milbank each matched Skadden’s $100 million pledge, also making their commitments before any direct legal threat materialised from the administration.
Kirkland and Ellis, Latham and Watkins, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman each committed $125 million, totalling $500 million among them, with their respective EEOC DEI investigations subsequently dropped.
Cadwalader rounded out the group at $100 million, bringing the combined total across all nine firms to $940 million in pro bono commitments directed toward causes at the president’s discretion.
Kirkland and Ellis later emerged as having actively attempted to recruit other major law firms into joining the collective settlement arrangement with the administration.
Both Kirkland and Simpson Thacher hired the lobbying shop of a prominent Trump fundraiser as part of their respective processes of reaching agreement with the White House.
The lawmakers pressing Skadden for answers appear increasingly sceptical that the firm will provide any substantive response, given its silence on earlier correspondence regarding the Intel conflict.