We’d all like to forget 2020, but it’s unlikely we will. And maybe that’s a good thing. Undoubtedly, we’ll remember it as the year of COVID-19, global protests calling for social justice and an unprecedented presidential election. But it was also a year in which business leaders started to rethink their value systems and how they engage with stakeholders, especially their employees.

Big Law was no exception. Following the presidential election, many firms found themselves thrown into the media spotlight due to their work for the Trump administration or the Republican National Committee. These firms became the target of negative media coverage, protests and aggressive social media campaigns fueled by deep-pocketed activist groups like The Lincoln Project. But this wasn’t the first time that the values and culture of some of the nation’s biggest law firms came under the spotlight.