YouSaid · the spoken record

Rachel Cohen

lines on the record: 29
first: 2025-04-08
most recent: 2025-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Going to come from people of color, it's going to come from people that understand theory and allyship and are plugged into their communities and care about them deeply. And so hopefully we also get some people that have a little bit more agency, but if we don't, that's all that's ever worked anyway.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the path that I'm on, right? Like that's the path that we go down if people collectively act now and intervene. That's the path that we're on, is some bad things will happen. We're already seeing them happen. There's people with legal status being deported to a Salvadorian prisons because of clerical errors, because they're deporting people over judges' orders. I think that There's absolutely a path to not just interrupt these harms, but to channel the kind of response and reaction right now to make a much better version of this country. And I think no matter what, things get darker before that happens. But I think At the end of the day, I'm coming on and saying these bad things could happen, but I'm acting in a way where I'm very confident they don't have to.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't have a next career move with the nature of my educational credentials, my financial situation, having worked at Scatin for several years, all of these things. I already felt that I had an obligation to try to prevent the bad thing that I see coming.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being in good favor with someone who does not respect people, it's much less about policy aims of the Trump admin and that I certainly would not be quitting my job. I didn't quit when he got elected. I didn't. You know, that's a political thing. I don't expect the firm to speak on political issues, though they have in the past. But I certainly don't expect that from a business. That's not what this is. It's not about politics. It's about existential infringement on American values and the existence of a constitutional republic in this country.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2023 profits per equity partner at Paul Weiss, $6,574,000. Skadnarps five million four hundred three thousand dollars annually. So I just want to make sure that when we're talking about what profits are being lost and also the people who, again, swore an oath to the Constitution who are working in this industry, who need it to exist, who are clearing $5 million a year. I think that the long-term business strategy of capitulating to someone with authoritarian and oligarchical tendencies, we've seen the way that Elon Musk operates and how he turns on people on a dime. Scadden represented Elon Musk in his Twitter acquisition. And that man has no loyalty. Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't have loyalty to each other. To hedge your bets on”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think number one, it's a bad business decision in the long term, and I'll come back to that in a second. I'm going to read you the profits per equity partner at Paul Weiss and ScadenARPs. This is the”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business less so. I certainly would argue that there's a moral obligation when Business leaders want to be listened to and respected and dismantle guardrails on American capitalism so that they can achieve certain profits that then there becomes a moral obligation for you to continue to speak on those things even when it's hard. But I don't think there's a legal one. And I think that's just the nature of capitalism. I do think with law firms it's different because you swear your oaths. Most of us swear an oath to the Constitution If you work in this industry and especially if you've made millions and millions of dollars off of it and your industry is crucial for the functioning of American democracy and you also swore an oath kind of to the law and the concept of this American experiment broadly.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are fundamentally misaligned on what we think is going to come in the next three years if we fold on this now, because I do not think that there is an end to the Trump administration if we do not hold the line and act collectively.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think a lot of people think that it's 2016 and are so convinced of their own intellectual superiority that they are ignoring that the Trump administration is outplaying them. There's a real problem with people being convinced that we are once again in a situation where you have a disorganized president who is blustery, who doesn't know what he's doing. And it's a real indictment of judgment to be able to say Donald Trump is he's stupid, so it doesn't matter. We're going to just beat him. I had people say to me in meetings, well, this will all work itself out in three years because people are going to be coming out of the Trump administration trying to get jobs and nobody will hire them because we're all mad.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly what I said would happen happens. And Scadin announces via New York Times news alert. None of my, I'm still friends with all of the people I was friends with at the firm before that. There was no previous conversation. And they were asking for meetings, having meetings, attending meetings, talking to managing partners until literally 30 seconds before the New York Times news alert comes out announcing that Skadden has promised $100 million in pro bono work to the Trump administration. Despite the fact that not only do they not have an executive order entered against them, but my understanding is that the Trump admin didn't even agree to withdraw their EEOC demand letter. It's one of the worst deals, not to sound like Donald Trump, but it's one of the worst deals of all time. Like, it's insane.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was locked out of my internal email within three hours and received a call the next morning that I texted and said, I'm a very good attorney. Please put this in writing and received an email that said, as you probably expected, we accept your resignation. And what ends up happening is I get removed from all of the systems and a week later.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wrote this email and I outline what are my asks for the firm? What should we be doing? It's not just stomp your feet and say do something. It's stomp your feet and say, these are the things that we could do. And then I called my parents who are, they were both JAG attorney and then stayed with the Air Force for their entire careers. And they are white people who live in Ohio who have a lot of faith in systems. And I said, I am not calling to ask if this action might get me fired. I'm calling to ask, does it feel unfair? Is there something else I should exhaust first? I was careful to explain to people that I had really tried. I felt everything else possible to not torture a career. And so sent this email.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of these associates just found out via New York Times news alert that their firm has committed them to doing these things. When Jeremy London, the executive partner of Scaden, made this deal, he sent all the And to be an attorney and receive that at all, insane, but to be a black attorney at Scaden and receive that email when I think our stats are still single digits on the percentage of black associates in the law firm and in the industry broadly. And so I'm on the bus. And I'm thinking. What's the next proactive step? I went home.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, or it's a Trump administration's interest. Is Paul Weiss about to show up arguing why Mahmoud Khalil should be an indefinite ice detention? Because he attended a protest a year and a half ago. It was very, very scary to me, especially as someone that has a robust pro bono practice. And then the second thing that they did that stood out to me was that they agreed to have an independent investigator to be mutually agreed with the Trump administration come in to evaluate not just their hiring practices on a go-forward basis, but also their promotion and retention practices. And it gave such immediate... Support to the fears that my non white friends had felt about what was going to happen to them and their data if these firms complied with the Trump administration.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it's like he puts on those fake glasses with like the nose and mustache And sends the exact same guy back in who's just been kicked out of the bar. And so Paul Weiss enters this deal.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I can talk to you, it's not just at Skadin. And Bob, they are 10 pages long. It's insane. And so we're having these meetings. Paul Weiss has this executive order leveraged against it. We're meeting not just on the EEOC demand letters, but pressuring trying to get firms to collectively support Perkins. We're sending these emails. We're getting very unsatisfying responses. And then Paul Weiss announces that they have made a deal with the Trump administration to get him to withdraw his executive order against them, despite the fact that Perkins is fighting their executive order. They've won this temporary restraining order. And just as an aside on any other timeline with any other president, you wouldn't issue an identical executive order over a temporary restraining order and functionally enjoining another executive order that looks exactly the same way. It's almost intentional to see what the system will bear.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once they pointed it out to me, I realized that, of course, I thought that they were right. That was very on brand for the Trump administration to do. I also think it's important to name that as these letters go out, former commissioners of the EEOC issue a letter saying that they are unenforceable and likely illegally delivered because they did not follow proper process within the EEOC. Everyone's so busy that people don't read this letter. I didn't read that letter. People in the firm did not read that letter. And so we're emailing, asking for meetings with management, they're providing them. We're going into these meetings and management is telling us that the demand letters are very complicated, that they're not employment lawyers, they don't know what the law is, they don't know what the obligations are. And so”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, in a searchable spreadsheet that includes their race, it asks for email address, phone number, race, law school GPA, and it asks for it in a searchable PDF. And the first thing I'll name, if you're listening to this and can't see me and haven't seen me, I'm a white woman. My mind didn't jump here immediately, but several of my friends who are not white, their minds immediately go to being doxed and that the Trump administration is going to post their information on the internet, especially people who maybe their grades were a little bit lower than white peers that they got hired over. And it's going to be alleged that that's why, as opposed to the fact that these firms interview for fit. And not just off GPA and numbers. And that's immediately where their minds went.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you going to give the Trump administration my cell phone number, especially when these EEOC demand letters request that information in a way that really zeros in on people who applied through diversity fellowships or something called the SEO fellowship, which was historically open to people from marginalized backgrounds?”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a question that I asked myself Because the initial Perkins QI executive order said, we are looking at 15 to 20 other law firms. And not to sound like a Scadin attorney, but I'm sorry, if you're looking at big representative law firms in the country that are known for public interest work or pro bono work rather, you're looking at SCADNARPs. I don't think there was any way to avoid that. And so the acting commissioner of the EOC, Andrea Lucas, sends out 20 EEOC demand letters that request personal information of applicants to the firm for the last over five years, and we're one of the firms that received that letter. I find it highly unlikely that any of the organizing that I and my friends were doing influenced that, all of a sudden, it's gone from these kind of real but esoteric rule of law concerns to concerns about”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're circulating that. It's getting hundreds of signatories, but it's very non confrontational. I'm doing some media around it. No one's really sure within the firm how to proceed. It was a very weird week of going into work.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, how do we take these risk averse attorneys and get them motivated to take any kind of collective action? And what we came up with was this kind of anonymized letter. So we write this open letter that's very focused on rule of law concerns. The first 100 signatories were only word of mouth. We had some phone trees going, people signed on, so we knew that all 100 of those people, even though I don't know who all of them are, they are all who they say they are. As soon as it went live, I posted it on LinkedIn and full and identified myself as a signatory and was very proud of that judgment call because as soon as we posted it on Reddit, someone responded and said, I don't know the value of something that you're not putting your name on. And I responded in that comment with a link to my LinkedIn post and said, my name's on it.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I must give credit where it's due. I got one response that was thanks, Rachel, always appreciate your perspective. The email I had sent literally, Bob, was like, the sky is falling. This is the beginning of autocracy. Thanks, Rachel. Always appreciate your perspective. And so in the background, I and a couple of friends are working on a plan B. We are looking at the problem of everybody knows that this is happening. Big law has a huge collective action problem. People are terrified of losing their jobs because there are not a lot of jobs that pay starting over $200,000 a year. And so if you've planned your financial future around that kind of income, even if you leave your firm, it's very important to not be blacklisted within the industry.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People in management, you read it, right? You saw that he outlined that he's coming for additional corporate law firms. I assume that there's some kind of industry-wide response. And I would like to know how I can be helpful there. If we're not organizing around some type of collective response to stand up for lawyers' rights to represent whatever client they choose to represent and not have those views imputed to them, that's a foundation of the American legal system. And we're really powerful within that system and we should be doing something to defend it.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I read the executive order all the way through and I saw that he was going to come for other firms. And then there was another executive action the following day that was aimed at public service loan forgiveness, which is a program that a lot of public interest attorneys use. It listed things like immigration representation. It listed things like defending people who block highways, which is, you know, a thinly veiled way at getting to free speech. And the combination of those two things made it very clear to me that this was the beginning of a broad scale assault on the legal profession, especially because the president had put out a fact sheet the week prior targeting Covington and Burling, not an executive order, but kind of the same thing, trying to punish people for doing past representation. And nobody had said anything. At that point, I reached out internally to people that I trusted and said, I just want to make sure that we're paying attention to.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nationwide. And so, just as a quick aside, these firms across the board had diversity, equity, and inclusion programs aimed at combating that. And so because of it, it gave the Trump administration a backdoor into attacking any law firm that he wanted on these grounds.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's two pages long. There's a roadmap laid out by the president that he is going to come after additional corporate law firms and that he's going to do it under the guise of kind of anti-DEI quote unquote equity pushback the way that the current administration views inclusion efforts as outside of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and claims that their racial preference, which having just worked at one of these firms, it's a little ironic to walk through the halls and think we have glass office doors so you can see everybody and to allege that there's any kind of anti-white bias in hiring in big law firms is a tough, tough thing to pitch equity partnerships or still, I believe, 88% white.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That executive order targeted Perkins Cooey and stripped them of security clearances, which are necessary for certain kinds of governmental work, and stripped them of government contracts, and also put pressure on third parties to disclose if they did business with Perkins CUI so that if the government contracted with those third parties, they could reevaluate those contracts. And if you read the executive order all the way through, which a lot of attorneys, especially at large corporate law firms, did not have time to do.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd love to. And just two quick things Harvard and Ohio State educated go bucks. Gadden is very prestigious and it's lucrative, and all of these things. I also love my coworkers. And that made it harder to walk away than any of the prestige or anything else. They're really great people. And I actually think that that's been borne out because we've already seen multiple other people quit after the Scadden kind of capitulation to Trump. But let's jump back to what feels like a lifetime ago, but was actually less than a month ago when the Perkins executive order, which was an executive order entered by Donald Trump targeting Perkins Cooey, a large corporate law firm, was entered on March 6th.”
2025-04-08 · Masters of Scale · When powerful law firms don’t defend themselves against Trump, with ex-Skadden associate Rachel Cohen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT