Government attorneys are scrambling to leave the federal workforce
As soon as he took office, President Donald Trump, in a series of executive orders, made it clear it wasn’t going to be business as usual for federal workers, including government lawyers. The Trump administration ordered federal workers back into the office “as soon as practicable” and established a hiring freeze. Trump also signed an executive order aimed at reducing the size of the federal workforce “through efficiency improvements and attrition” and has offered buyouts to nearly every federal employee.
Before the official administration change, federal government lawyers had already been scrambling to get out. Legal recruiters say that for months they have been getting an unprecedented number of calls, texts and emails from federal government lawyers looking for jobs in private practice.
“Oh, my goodness,” says Lauren Drake, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of recruiting firm Macrae. “We’ve never truly seen anything like this.”
Drake says that Macrae has already landed double the number of private-sector jobs for government lawyers than the last presidential election cycle.
The federal government is divided into career lawyers, who are supposed to provide continuity by working no matter which party is in power, and political hires, intended to further the goals of the administration in office. Whenever a new president takes office, political hires tend to leave their roles. In addition, some career lawyers may also choose to time their departure for a change in administration.
However, this election cycle has seen an unusual amount of career attorney panic, says Valerie Fontaine of SeltzerFontaine, a legal search consulting group in Los Angeles.
Law firms, particularly in D.C. and New York, want to hire the talent leaving the federal government, but they are overwhelmed by the number of candidates reaching out to them, legal recruiters say. Additionally, there may not be “enough space for all the lawyers looking to leave the federal government,” according to Drake.
“We are working with candidates who are uncertain whether there is room for them to return to their former firms, so they are exploring multiple options,” says Drake.
‘Get me out’
Haley Lelah, global director of Talent Acquisition & Integration, Partners & Counsel at McDermott Will & Emery, agrees that this election cycle is different, saying the firm is seeing double the number of resumés that usually come during a change in administration.
Legal recruiters say they are particularly hearing from Justice Department attorneys looking to leave.
“DOJ folks are like, ‘Get me out of here,’” says Fontaine. “They will be the first and most directly impacted [by the new administration], and they know it.”
Dan Binstock, a partner at Garrison, a Washington, D.C., recruiting firm, who has worked in lawyer recruitment for 20 years, says that the new administration “is causing attorneys to feel uneasy about their jobs.”
Government lawyers “don’t like the sense of uncertainty and unpredictability they are experiencing with the change of administrations, and it’s nothing like what I’ve seen in prior presidential election cycles,” says Binstock.
Also unusual, legal recruiters say, is pushback over law firms hiring prior administration lawyers. In December 2024, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on X that he would withhold business from law firms that hired high-level Biden administration Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers because their policies hurt the cryptocurrency industry, according to Reuters.
“It’s quite simple,” Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal wrote in response to an email sent by the ABA Journal. “[E]very professional should expect to be known by the company they keep. If you were a former SEC official that refused to tell us the rules before suing us for violating the rules, we aren’t interested in hiring you.”
‘Title matters’
Stephen M. Springer—managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa—says that his firm is not only placing lawyers into private practice from the Justice Department, but also from the SEC, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Treasury, among others.
Springer said that New York-based firms with Washington, D.C., offices are still hiring in a variety of areas with a focus on national security, antitrust, security enforcement and white-collar criminal defense. He adds that there is an “unprecedented” number of “incredibly qualified” government lawyers on the market for private firm positions.
The more marketable lawyers, says Springer, are those whose high-profile government jobs allowed them to “interface with the private sector” so that lawyers in private practice “saw them in action.”
“If you work in a department that does policy work and doesn’t interface with the private sector as much, it’s a little harder” to find a firm job, says Springer.
Drake says the Washington, D.C., office of Macrae, which often represents senior government lawyers or firm partners looking to move, has been inundated with requests for representation from high-level government attorneys, both political and career, including “federal prosecutors associated with various special counsel investigations.”
Drake says she started receiving a marked increase in concerned calls from federal government attorneys after the televised presidential debate in June 2024 between Trump and President Joe Biden. Then, after it was clear that Trump won the election, the number of calls skyrocketed, says Drake.
She adds that the most successful candidates coming out of the government are senior level, often with a “significant reputation and tremendous credibility to put in front of clients.”
“Frankly, title matters,” says Drake.
In addition, Drake says that government attorneys who are specialists, or experts, in an area of the law, such as national security, economic sanctions, antitrust and foreign investment rules, are placing faster than attorneys whose experience is broader, but perhaps with less depth of knowledge in a single area.
Binstock says he’s encouraging lawyers who don’t think their job is in immediate jeopardy to hold off on leaving until they’ve spent some time under the Trump administration.
“People are thinking, I just need to get out, but they may be more marketable six months or a year from now,” says Binstock. “They will have had interactions with the new administration and a better understanding of its internal workings, and that will make them more valuable in the private sector.”
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