Big Law Recruited Me, Celebrated Me, Then Fired Me

The cost of speaking out in the Trump era.

Photo: Courtesy of Author

A few weeks ago, I was fired from one of the biggest law firms in the world. Why?

In May, I wrote about the constitutional dangers of a possible surveillance partnership between the Trump administration and Palantir, the data firm co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Two weeks later, The New York Times confirmed a deal had been ongoing for months.

Palantir has built the tools to collect data on millions of Americans without their knowledge or consent. The Trump administration has selectively targeted immigrants and pledged to prosecute political enemies. That combination creates a high potential for abuse, and I believed it was important to discuss.

Shortly after publishing the piece, my firm instructed me to stop speaking out. I understood that continuing could result in consequences. Still, I refused. I believed the issues I was raising mattered, and I kept writing. The next day, I was fired and escorted out of my office by two security guards.

I should have seen it coming. Not being fired, but the inevitable conflict between who I was and who the firm wanted me to be.

After all, I was never supposed to make it to Big Law. I dropped out of high school a few weeks before my senior year. I earned my GED while working odd jobs: mobile veterinary technician, summer camp lifeguard, and toy store cashier, to name a few. Statistically, my story should have ended there.

Instead, I made it through. I graduated from college in three years, earned a law degree from Harvard, and landed a job at a top firm.

My background set me apart, and the firm was quick to put it on display. I was asked to speak on law school panels, travel to recruit prospective hires, and tell my story whenever possible to promote the firm. For a while, I believed that meant I was valued.

Then, the Trump administration set its eyes on the legal profession: targeting judges, weaponizing the Department of Justice, and threatening constitutional norms. So, I started writing. I believed it was important to speak out, and that the firm eager to showcase my story might also honor the voice behind it. I was met with a more uncomfortable reality.

In Big Law, silence is golden. The industry is built on quiet deference: to wealth, to prestige, to the idea that neutrality is a virtue. Criticizing authoritarianism shouldn’t have been provocative—but at my firm, it was.

Because it was risky. In a sector obsessed with access and proximity to power, risk is the one thing that gets managed out. And so silence becomes strategy. Compliance becomes culture. I had spent years climbing toward the top of the profession. And suddenly, it became clear: the places I’d spent my life trying to reach had never really wanted my voice.

Big Law is eager to recruit nontraditional students like me—for the grit, the struggle, the resilience. Firms boast about us in interviews and spotlight us in glossy brochures. But beneath the celebration is an expectation: that our stories will fit the narrative that’s already been written. The performance of difference is welcome. The reality of dissent less so.

What happened to me is part of a broader shift in Big Law: beyond silence, and toward active collaboration. Some of the nation’s largest law firms have scaled back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, retreated from civil rights work, and erased history of their previous anti-Trump work. Some have gone to great lengths to appease the administration’s agenda.

Apparently that includes showing the door to anyone who dares to criticize the White House.

Ryan W. Powers is an attorney and participant in Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term. He currently writes a weekly newsletter on democracy, dissent, and the law, which you can read here.