Big Law Firms Bowed to Trump. A Corps of ‘Little Guys’ Jumped in to Fight Him.

President Trump’s executive orders seeking to punish big law firms have led some of them to acquiesce to him and left others reluctant to take on pro bono cases that could put them at odds with the administration.

But as opponents of the White House’s policies organized to fight Mr. Trump in court on a vast range of actions and policies, they quickly found that they did not need to rely on Big Law. Instead, an army of solo practitioners, former government litigators and small law firms stepped up to volunteer their time to challenge the administration’s agenda.

“I don’t know if the administration knew how many little guys are out there,” said Michael H. Ansell, a solo practitioner in Morristown, N.J., who earlier this year joined the Pro Bono Litigation Corps, newly launched by Lawyers for Good Government, a legal nonprofit. He answered the nonprofit’s plea for lawyers willing to give at least 20 hours a week to an upcoming case. More than 80 volunteered.

Earlier this year, Mr. Trump issued a flurry of executive orders and implicit threats targeting major law firms whose past work or clients he did not like. While some of the firms chose to fight the orders and have so far prevailed in court, others hastened to settle, agreeing in the process to steer about $1 billion in pro bono work toward the administration’s favored causes. Even some of those who stood up to Mr. Trump have been leery of further provoking his ire by taking on cases opposing the administration.

But lawyers like Mr. Ansell have been eager to jump in. He helped interview plaintiffs for a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia late last month against the Environmental Protection Agency. About 20 community, environmental and tribal groups, as well as the cities of Springfield, Mass., San Francisco and Sacramento are suing to restore money they were awarded but lost after the E.P.A. terminated its Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants program.

Mr. Ansell typically handles small business disputes, “so I don’t have to worry about losing any big-time government contractor clients,” he said.

“We’re the last line of defense, it seems,” he said.

The tsunami of lawsuits against the administration — more than 400, according to a New York Times tracker — spurred him to pitch in.

He is especially motivated by what he views as cases involving a violation of due process rights, “in which the administration says, ‘This is wrong’ or ‘This person is a criminal,’ and there’s no means for anyone to challenge them,” he said.

Necessities like legal malpractice insurance are covered by Lawyers for Good Government, which is funded by donations, including $1.6 million given by Atlanta trial lawyers, including Jay Sadd, co-founder of a small Atlanta firm.

The Pro Bono Litigation Corps is led by John Marks, founder of the nonprofit Search for Common Ground, and Gary DiBianco, who retired as a litigation partner for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom years before the firm mollified Mr. Trump by pledging $100 million in pro bono work.

It is a new, relatively small entrant in the battle against portions of the Trump agenda being waged by big nonprofits like Democracy Forward, Democracy Defenders Fund, Protect Democracy, Public Citizen and the A.C.L.U.

Small firms and solo lawyers have taken the lead in immigration cases — pro bono turf that in Mr. Trump’s first term was routinely occupied by big firms. Earlier this month, a coalition of human rights groups led an unsuccessful challenge to the administration’s deportation of eight migrants to South Sudan.

Several groups sued immediately after the Supreme Court’s ruling last month limiting the ability of lower-court judges to block executive branch policies nationwide, including Mr. Trump’s order banning birthright citizenship. A New Hampshire judge blocked the citizenship order after certifying the suit as a class action, one of the few remaining avenues to impose such a far-reaching limit after the high court’s ruling.

“If every single immigrant who has a baby in the U.S. has to sue to obtain citizenship, we are happy to create an army of lawyers to represent those people,” Mr. DiBianco said.

After the big firm Perkins Coie sued the Justice Department to block Mr. Trump’s executive order against it, 504 firms signed a friend of the court brief on its behalf.

The brief has become a test of mettle among lawyers, who checked it to see which big names were willing to stand up publicly to Mr. Trump. Not many, it turned out. Only eight of the nation’s top 100 firms signed the brief, including WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey, Jenner & Block and Covington & Burling, all of which were also targeted by Mr. Trump’s executive orders and sued to block them.

The vast majority of signers are far smaller. Karen C. Burgess, a commercial litigator with her own firm in Austin, Texas, said she signed because the executive orders “blew my mind,” reminding her of McCarthy-era blacklists. “They got the chilling effect they hoped for.”

When Ms. Burgess read in March that the Trump administration’s investigation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at four dozen colleges had swept in her undergraduate alma mater, Rice University, she called its leadership with an offer. If Rice winds up in court, “we’ll give what we can and be happy to do it,” she said.

Ms. Burgess pointed out that of the 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, only a small fraction work for big firms.

“Everywhere there’s a courthouse, there’s a lawyer,” she said. “We’re small and mighty in numbers, and willing to cause discomfort if necessary.”

A handful of big firms have joined the fray. Cooley, a top 100 firm, is representing Jenner & Block in its suit battling Mr. Trump’s executive order. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is representing Harvard, a prime target in Mr. Trump’s crackdown on top colleges. Mr. Trump’s sons fired the firm’s co-managing partner, William A. Burck, as an outside ethics counsel for the Trump Organization after he agreed to represent Harvard in April.

“The small and medium-sized firms have more than filled the gap,” said Norman Eisen, a former Obama administration ethics official who founded the Democracy Defenders Fund. The nonprofit has handled scores of high-profile matters challenging the administration, prompting Mr. Trump to name Mr. Eisen in an executive order revoking any access to classified information and “unescorted access to secure United States government facilities.”

Talking with government scientists, national security experts and law enforcement agents, “I get a firsthand view of how this is going to affect the country — people telling me over and over again how they took these jobs because they are making a difference,” she said.

“I have not stopped to add up all the hours I have done for free,” she said. “I have three daughters. When this is all said and done, I need to look them in the face and know I did everything I could.”

Mr. Eisen’s group collaborates often with the prominent trial lawyer Abbe Lowell, one of the biggest of the “little guys.” Earlier this year Mr. Lowell, a defense lawyer who has represented both Hunter Biden and Ivanka Trump, left Winston & Strawn, a top firm, to form his own small shop.

Mr. Lowell calls Mr. Trump’s retribution against Big Law “a concerted, maniacal masterstroke.” He laments the firms’ “lack of courage,” and their failure to form a united front when the executive orders started coming.

He praised the little-known players who have helped win scores of injunctions and reversals.

“When this administration came into power, they were bragging about their strategy to flood the zone,” he said. “It turns out that the legal community is flooding the zone and they’re the ones that can’t keep up. That gives me motivation every day, and hope.”

Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting from Washington.