You’ll be forgiven if your heart isn’t breaking over the fate of the handful of elite law firms recently targeted by Donald Trump. So a few megarich corporations who help make mega-megarich corporations even richer stand to get a little less rich? We’ve got bigger problems.

But don’t skim past this one. You’ve heard the Shakespeare quote: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That line is sometimes misinterpreted as an expression of frustration directed at lawyers, who are always mucking things up and impeding free enterprise and a good time. But Shakespeare’s point, in context, is that lawyers stand in the way of lawlessness, so anyone hoping to subvert the established order might want to start by chucking all us pesky J.D.’s in the river.

Trump has now targeted a string of elite law firms for reasons that are equal parts Machiavelli, Mean Girls, and Dick (the character who speaks the aforementioned line in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2). The president has issued a series of formal proclamations that warn vaguely but darkly of the “significant risks” posed by these “rogue law firms,” which engage in “harmful activity” and “egregious conduct.” The Orwellian preludes quickly give way to burn-book flaming of the condemned law firms. Trump offers zero pretext; this is entirely about retribution, personal and political.

Witness the sins of the commander-in-chief’s disfavored firms. Covington & Burling (where I worked 20-plus years ago) made the list primarily because, horror of horrors, it is providing free legal services to Jack Smith. The president attacked Jenner and Block largely because it formerly employed Andrew Weissmann, who once prosecuted the bumbling Trump-adjacent

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