Calling all lawyers. This is our moment.

The legal profession has struggled to address the ongoing assault on the rule of law. But it's not too late to turn things around.

Last week, I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the Annual Dinner of the Massachusetts Bar Association. While these remarks were prepared with my fellow lawyers in mind, I hope they will resonate outside legal circles as well.

There has never been a more important time to be a lawyer.

For me, this became painfully clear on March the 7th of last year—the day I was fired from the Justice Department. It was a Friday afternoon, and I was in my last meeting of the day, with about 25 people from around the Department. My deputy burst in and pulled me out into the hallway. She told me that security officers were waiting in my office with termination papers.

When I got back to my office, they handed me a one-page memo from the Deputy Attorney General informing me that I was fired effective immediately. It gave no reason. They watched me pack my personal belongings into a grocery bag, and they walked me out of the building in front of my staff. Everyone was stunned. That was the last time I set foot inside the Justice Department.

There is a famously misunderstood line from Shakespeare about lawyers. In King Henry VI, the character Dick the Butcher converses with Jack Cade, the rebel leader who is plotting an uprising against the King. Dick says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This line has often been read as disparaging the value of lawyers. But in fact, its meaning is the opposite. As Justice John Paul Stevens explained in a 1985 opinion: “Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

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Disposing of lawyers has been a major theme of the last sixteen months. Particularly inside the Justice Department. I was fired seven weeks into Donald Trump’s second presidency. Pam Bondi had been installed as Attorney General, and Todd Blanche as her deputy.

I had expected that these leadership changes would affect my work, but I had assumed my job was safe. I held a career position in the Senior Executive Service, which came with extensive statutory job protections.

And I did not plan to give this job up, because I believed in the work I was doing. As Pardon Attorney, my job was to review the thousands of applications for executive clemency that come through the Justice Department each year. I led a team of career staff who rigorously investigated and vetted these applications. Most came from incarcerated people seeking a second chance at freedom. In every case, we crafted a detailed recommendation to grant or deny relief, based on factors like rehabilitation and changes in law and policy.

My team and I took our work very seriously, because we understood that the stakes were extremely high for the applicants—as well as their loved ones. We got piles of mail, every day, from people whose hopes were resting on the possibility of clemency.

Even when the Administration changed, I believed there was a path forward for the work. I thought that if I stayed in my post, I would be able to help some deserving people get the second chances they had earned.

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It took about half a day to be proven wrong. I was at home the evening of January 20th—Inauguration Day—watching television with my family, when a news alert popped up announcing that the President had pardoned all of the January 6 defendants. About 1,500 people in total. As Pardon Attorney, part of my job was to make sure the President’s clemency directives were carried out. Yet no one had consulted me. No one had even given me a heads up.

Frantic calls started coming in from the Bureau of Prisons. There were 400 people who needed to be released from facilities around the country THAT NIGHT. There were families showing up at prisons and banging on doors demanding the release of their loved ones. It was chaos.

Still, I didn’t give up all hope at that point. I thought, well, that was a campaign promise—and now that it’s fulfilled, we can get into the real work. But over the next few days, dozens more pardons were granted. And I was not consulted on any of them. My team was repeatedly surprised and left scrambling to implement directives that had never been shared with us.

By February, it was clear that we were not going to have a role in advising the president on clemency. Instead, we were given a different task. The Attorney General was establishing an initiative to begin restoring gun ownership rights to those who had lost the right to possess a firearm due to a criminal conviction. Over 25 million people would be eligible to apply for this relief. I was told that the project would be administered by my Office.

This was rather shocking given the magnitude of the task. But I rolled with it. What you have to understand about working as a federal employee at that time is the atmosphere of intense panic that had consumed the workforce. Out of nowhere, DOGE emerged and started slashing jobs. Agencies were directed to start planning for Reductions in Force. The “Fork in the Road” memo advised federal workers to consider taking a buyout and looking for work in the private sector. Elon Musk was making public appearances with a chainsaw.

Federal workers were terrified. I was holding on for my team. They were counting on me to lead us through this nightmare. This was growing harder every day. We had no guidance from DOJ leadership. Rumors and speculation were rampant. I held daily staff meetings that routinely ended with half the room in tears.

So, when we got this new assignment—the gun rights project—my team was relieved that we would have something to do, to justify our existence. I jumped in and got to work.

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But almost immediately, things became extremely fraught. Early in the project, there was discussion of whether those with domestic violence convictions should be eligible for reinstatement of gun rights. DOJ’s own data highlighted the dangers of arming domestic abusers. Nearly half the women murdered in this country are killed by an intimate partner, usually with a firearm. An abuser’s access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a victim will be killed.

Despite this data, there was a seemingly urgent desire to reinstate the gun rights of a specific individual with a domestic violence history: the actor Mel Gibson—who had been named a “special ambassador to Hollywood” by Donald Trump. Gibson had lost his right to own a firearm when he was convicted of battering his girlfriend. After Trump returned to office, Gibson asked the Justice Department to reinstate his gun rights, citing his personal relationship with the president and his catalogue of famous films.

I, in turn, was asked to write a memo for the Attorney General recommending that she grant Gibson’s request. I could not do that. I had grave concerns about the public safety implications of arming a convicted domestic abuser. I voiced my concerns. And then I was invited to set them aside and make the recommendation anyway.

The Attorney General didn’t actually need me to make this recommendation. She could grant Gibson the relief he was seeking with or without my blessing. (In fact, she did so after I was fired.) But as a nonpolitical official, I understood that my recommendation would add a veneer of legitimacy to what could otherwise look like a political favor for a friend of the President.

This request came at a time when the loyalty of the Department’s career workforce was being vigorously tested. We were told that we should consider ourselves the President’s lawyers. We had been warned that if we failed to “faithfully” follow directions, and “zealously” carry out orders, we would be fired. Everyone was walking on eggshells.

So, I knew the Mel Gibson request was fraught. I knew there were possible consequences for my future. The afternoon before I was fired, I sent a message to my colleague asking, “Is Mel Gibson going to be my downfall?” And he was. But I have no regrets, because I left the Justice Department with my integrity intact.

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I decided to speak out about my firing. I gave an interview to The New York Times a few days later. I went on CNN and MSNBC. Seeking publicity made me feel vulnerable and afraid. But I was more afraid of the consequences of staying quiet. I was afraid of what was happening inside the Department of Justice and the consequences it would have for our country.

I was right to be apprehensive about speaking out. The Deputy Attorney General immediately accused me of lying. I later learned that DOJ filed an ethics complaint against me with the D.C. Bar, where I am licensed. But I decided I wasn’t going to be bullied into silence.

A few weeks after my firing, I was asked to testify in Congress. Democratic Members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees were convening a spotlight hearing on threats to the rule of law. That’s when things took another ugly turn.

The hearing was scheduled to take place on a Monday. The Friday before, I got a phone call around 9:00 at night from a DOJ number. I was in the car with my husband and my parents, driving them home from an evening out. A very decent former colleague was calling to alert me that the Deputy Attorney General had sent armed U.S. Marshals to my home to deliver a warning letter about my expected testimony. The officers were on their way to my house as we spoke. The caller knew it would be very upsetting to my family when armed officers arrived at my doorstep late that night. When I told the caller that my teenage son was home alone, they helped to get the officers called off.

I eventually received DOJ’s letter by email. It warned me about the legal risks of proceeding with my congressional testimony. I then spent the entire weekend looking for a lawyer. My husband and I spent two days calling everyone in our network. Over a dozen lawyers and law firms turned us down before I found someone willing to help.

This was at the height of the Trump Administration’s use of Executive Orders to target law firms. Some of the most prominent defense firms in the country were facing retaliation for working on matters adverse to the Administration’s agenda—or for employing lawyers who the President considered enemies. Firms that had not been targeted sought to avoid it by keeping a low profile. In this environment, I quickly discovered that even the most lauded litigators in Washington were afraid to stand up for the rule of law.

The lawyers I spoke to thanked me for what I was doing. They praised my bravery and my integrity. They offered to help “behind the scenes.” But they did not want to sit behind me at a congressional hearing. No law firm wanted to put their name on a letter to the Department of Justice. I have never felt more vulnerable or more alone.

It never crossed my mind, though, not to testify. I showed up that Monday, and I sounded the alarm. Here’s part of what I said that day:

My experience is just one example of a much broader pattern of attacks on career experts across the Department of Justice. These pervasive assaults by the political leadership of the Department are terrorizing the career workforce. This is not by accident or oversight—it is by design. The very purpose of systematically forcing out career employees is to invoke fear, so that fear will give way to blind loyalty.

It is dangerous and wrong to prioritize political loyalty over the laws of this nation, the safety of its citizens, and the fair and responsible administration of justice.

Since my firing, things have gotten much worse. My former office has lost most of its staff. It is now managed by Ed Martin, a conspiracy theorist and election denier whose motto is “no MAGA left behind.” Clemency has become a cash industry. Pardons have been granted freely to donors and allies of the President, while the applications of ordinary Americans have been ignored.

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What has happened to the pardon office is also happening across the Department of Justice.

Leadership has systematically removed career experts who present roadblocks to their political agenda. They have fired or forced out the senior officials responsible for enforcing institutional rules, including: the Director of the Ethics Office, the Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility, and the Director of the Office of Information Policy—which oversees compliance with FOIA.

Experienced prosecutors have been ousted for refusing to pursue political vendettas, like the prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Others have resigned amid pressure to take corrupt actions, like dismissing the prosecution of Eric Adams, the former New York City Mayor charged with taking bribes. Some quit over the Department’s refusal to investigate the killing of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and the directive to investigate her widow instead.

Even more prosecutors and FBI agents have lost their jobs simply because of the cases they were assigned to work on during the previous administration. The Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, recently boasted about “purging” hundreds of staff who worked on investigations of the President. Dozens more were fired over their work investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

In total, the Department has lost over 11,000 employees since Donald Trump returned to office. That is about 10% of its workforce. Among those who have left are more than 4,000 federal law enforcement personnel and 3,400 lawyers. That is one quarter of DOJ’s entire attorney staff.

Offices that have been particularly hard hit include the National Security Division, which has lost 38% of its staff, and the Civil Rights Division, which has lost more than half its staff.

The Department’s reputation has become so degraded that it is struggling to fill these positions. It has hired fewer than 800 new attorneys to replace the 3,400 who have departed. DOJ is now offering signing bonuses of $25,000 to anyone willing to take the job. The lawyers coming in often have little or no relevant experience.

In fact, DOJ is now explicitly recruiting lawyers on the basis of political affiliation rather than experience. The former Chief of Staff to Pam Bondi has urged lawyers who “support President Trump” to reach out to him on X about working at DOJ. The head of the Civil Rights Division shared a post on X saying: “if you are remotely rightwing” “you can go straight into DOJ” from law school. This is unprecedented.

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The staff who remain are making difficult calculations every day. Employees have been directed to “vigorously defend” presidential policies or face termination. That has forced many lawyers to choose between obeying their bosses and honoring their oath to uphold the Constitution.

Those who have chosen the Constitution have been ousted. In one instance, a lawyer was fired after he admitted to a judge that the United States had wrongly deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. That prompted a federal appeals court to take the unusual step of reminding government attorneys that “the duty of zealous representation is tempered by the duty of candor to the court … and the duty to uphold the rule of law.”

That admonition had little effect on the Department’s conduct. A recent analysis by Just Security documents dozens of cases in which federal courts have found that government lawyers presented false and misleading information. Federal judges have documented hundreds of cases in which the government failed to comply with court orders. Judges around the country have questioned whether the government still deserves the “presumption of regularity”—which is a doctrine of implicit trust and good faith from which government attorneys have benefitted for generations.

These are extraordinary rebukes. But Department leaders have been unmoved. They have continued to sow disrespect and mistrust for the judiciary. They have derided and vilified judges who rule against them. The Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, has said that DOJ is at “war” with the courts.

This is not a political issue. The erosion of respect for the rule of law is an existential threat to our Republic. In the Abrego Garcia case, the noted conservative jurist J. Harvie Wilkinson called the Administration’s attacks on the Judiciary “a losing proposition all around.” He wrote:

The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.

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I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how we got here. How could an institution as fundamental as the Department of Justice collapse so quickly? How could it fall so far, so fast? The answer, I think, is that too many of us took it for granted. Too many of us became complacent.

Alums of DOJ often speak about the “norms” and “traditions” of the Department. They are referencing a code of conduct that the Department imposed on itself long ago. Generations of government lawyers adhered to this code without question, because it reflected shared values that were deeper and more enduring than politics.

Until recently, those values were self-reinforcing. They were so entrenched that they seemed to be immutable. We did not even consider the possibility that those values could be attacked. As a result, we were not prepared to come to their defense.

But all is not lost. Judge Wilkinson warned that we are facing “an incipient crisis.” But this moment, he noted, “may present an opportunity as well.” The rule of law is “vital to the American ethos,” he wrote, and we now have a “unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

While there is still time. As lawyers, we have taken an oath to uphold the law and support the Constitution. We must consider what our oath requires of us right now. We cannot be complacent. We cannot be bystanders. We have a duty to act while there is still time.

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As lawyers, we are trained to be deliberative and cautious. But the moment for cautious deliberation has passed. What is needed from us now is action. The rule of law is fighting for its life, and we lawyers are the only ones who can save it.

The stakes could not be higher. Our fellow Americans are counting on us to fight for their constitutional rights. Our neighbors are counting on us to keep them safe and free. Our children are counting on us to protect their futures.

Every single one of us has a role to play. It doesn’t matter where you practice. It doesn’t matter what your specialty is. You have something to contribute.

Many of us want to help but aren’t sure how. So I want to suggest four things that each one of us can do to meet this critical moment.

Number One: Invest in community. Communities like this one. State Bar Associations are uniquely positioned to be leaders in defending the rule of law. You have a platform right here. You have a tremendous amount of talent and brainpower, right here in this room. You can shape conversations. You can educate the public. You can mobilize your community into action.

Lawyers don’t always like to collaborate. Sometimes we’re territorial. Sometimes we’re competitive. Sometimes we are adversaries. But right now, we are all on the same team. This is the time to come together to defend our shared values. We are stronger together. We are more powerful together. We are more effective together. This is the time to lean into our community.

Number Two: Try new things. This is a moment like no other. The challenges we are facing are unprecedented. There is no tried and tested playbook to turn to. So we must be creative. We must think outside the box. My personal mantra is: Be brave and try new things.

After I was fired, I did something I never in a million years would have imagined myself doing. I got on TikTok. I started making short videos about threats to the rule of law. Now I post them a few times a week on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I try to explain legal concepts in a way that everyone can understand.

When I first started doing this, I had no experience whatsoever with social media. But it has turned out to be a really great way to use my legal expertise to help my fellow citizens. My videos started getting thousands and then millions of views. People write me all the time now to ask questions and to share how grateful they are to have an expert they trust helping them understand the challenges we are facing.

This is not something I ever expected to be doing. But by trying something new, I found a way to meet the moment and continue my public service.

Number Three: Support those on the front lines. Some of us have been personally affected by the policies and practices of this administration. Some of us perhaps have not. But we are all a stone’s throw away from someone whose life has been turned upside down by the assault on due process and the rule of law in our country.

We have seen colleagues face personal and professional retaliation. We have seen career public servants discarded like garbage. We have seen immigrants treated like animals. We have seen protesters assaulted and even killed for exercising their rights.

Those who are out there on the front lines defending the Constitution—standing up for themselves and others—need our support. Judges are being terrorized for doing their jobs. Whistleblowers are facing retaliation. Our neighbors are taking risks and feeling vulnerable. They need to know that we have their backs.

A low point of my career was the weekend before my congressional testimony when I struggled to find a lawyer. I think we’ve come a long way since then. I have several great lawyers helping me now. And that’s what has allowed me to continue fighting for what’s right.

I believe we will get through this. But there are many others who will need your help and your support along the way.

Number Four: Use your voice. This one is simple, because there are so many ways to do it. If you see something that alarms you, say something about it. Write an op-ed, make a TikTok video, file an amicus brief, give a speech, teach a class, host a webinar, sign a petition. There are so many different ways to make your voice heard.

As lawyers, we are stewards of the rule of law. We are defenders of the Constitution. Our voices are needed now more than ever.

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Many of us were ashamed by the way our profession responded initially to the assault on the rule of law. The law firms that cut deals with the administration made it so much harder for the rest of us to fight for the values and ideals of our profession.

But it is not too late to turn things around. If we lean into this community, if we pool our talents and use our voices, bravely—lawyers will be the heroes of this story.