In the spring semester of 2025, Aimee Cicchiello and Roop Patel interviewed Rachel Cohen.

Rachel is a 2022 Harvard Law Graduate who boldly challenged her law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to adequately respond to the current moment. In addition to asking about her experience as a corporate lawyer, Aimee and Roop also asked her if she had any advice for current students—many of whom are experiencing similar challenges when it comes to speaking out as students at Harvard Law School.

Aimee Cicchiello: I know that before you even resigned from Skadden for capitulating to Trump, you’ve been very outspoken publicly about Palestine and other causes.

Rachel Cohen: Before we even jump there, I actually resigned before they capitulated to Trump, and I think that that’s important just from a proactive reactivity messaging. It was following the Paul Weiss deal.

Aimee Cicchiello: Thanks for clarifying. I was curious how you navigated leadership at Skadden who didn’t want you to be speaking publicly.

Rachel Cohen: The navigation of Skaddden specifically, I will keep very high level just because otherwise it can tip over into Rachel versus Skadden as opposed to an industry-wide issue. And firms that really deserve a lot of attention on their handling of Palestine, and even the rule of law issues, are some of the ones that are generally staying out of the news, like Sullivan and Cromwell, who announced last year that they were going to use AI to screen people out of consideration for positions because they had been at protests. Being publicly outspoken on those things is always going to be shaped a little bit differently because of the protections that come with whiteness, and also with a Harvard degree. 

On this particular, very charged issue, I think that there were many people who were disciplined for speaking about Palestine, but none of them were white. None of them. And I think that it’s something that’s really important for Harvard students in particular, and white Harvard students who claim that they want to practice allyship, to really sit with. Why is it that the only people that are suffering consequences on these issues are people of color, predominantly people who are Muslim and non-white? Maybe that’s because no white people are speaking on the topic, which is its own issue.

But also perhaps it’s because those consequences are just never going to be as severe for white people. And so navigating that situation, it was very important to me to model being outspoken, because I knew that there was a much higher tolerance for my being outspoken than for the average person. Whatever the policies were for me, if I stood firm on them, they would be the policies for the firm generally. Because they can’t not fire me over this and then fire somebody else, especially if they know that I’m willing to stand up to them and intervene. 

It’s going to be firm specific, how exactly you push the envelope and navigate that. And not just firm specific, but place of employment specific. Some of the time, in order to be able to do that, you’ll need to be information gathering and figuring out how exactly your place of employment works. And if their greatest fear is being in Above the Law, or if their greatest fear is not being able to recruit as much, or if their greatest fear is people not knowing who they are. All of these firms are prestige and money motivated. But how does that manifest? What they think of as prestige is quite different, right? What Quinn Emanuel considers prestigious is not what Skadden considers prestigious, because they have different approaches to the industry. 

“Build your capacity for discomfort with your own hypocrisy.”

I navigated that situation with a lot information gathering and pressure testing, where I understood how things worked because I had practiced by raising concerns that I had at onboarding events or when there were obvious microaggressions–or just gently figuring out how to navigate using all of the privileges that come with being a white Harvard grad in a way that’s not white savior-y, but is instead asking “how do I push the firm to hold space for more viewpoints, knowing that they will be more receptive to hearing me out than they will be to people that are more directly impacted?” 

It’s almost anthropological in the worst way, where people are discredited for speaking on lived experiences. But if you can speak about the exact same things through a theoretical, detached lens, then you’re viewed as being smart about these things. That’s the “right way” to do it, which then, in turn, makes it impossible for people who are directly impacted to ever achieve credibility on their own lives with a lot of people at the institution. 

I think it was just a practice in “what is capacity at Skadden and how have I learned that?” I listened a lot. I followed the news. That’s something that people struggle with in big law too. At the end of the day, being outspoken on those issues was stressful for me, but I have no patience for people at these institutions that claim that they care about these things and then say that it’s too hard to care about them publicly. The people that end up doing that, if anyone does it, are non-white people who are much more likely to be fired or otherwise disciplined at big law firms. So it was kind of a practice. The power of white people with Harvard degrees that then claim they don’t have power and dump labor onto people who have fewer systemic advantages is my great frustration of, not just big law and institutions or the legal institution, but our country. 

Aimee Cicchiello : So what I’m hearing is that Harvard students should be thinking about their positionality, using their racial privilege, information gathering, seeing what each firm itself values, and using that to your advantage. Do you have any other advice for law students that are going into big law for what they can do to hold firms accountable?

Rachel Cohen: Build your capacity for discomfort with your own hypocrisy. That’s why people check out–they start to feel like, “I’ve made this decision that isn’t in line with my own values and I’ve made it for like capitalistic reasons or for my own.” So instead of just acknowledging that, and making sure that you’re considering it when you’re thinking about your own positionality and why people might distrust you, you have to build tolerance for discomfort and sitting in that.

It’s not just specific to big law. The example I give all the time is flying. We know flying is very bad for the environment. It’s something I do all the time. Does that mean that then I just say, well, it doesn’t matter? Or does that mean that I just have to sit with the fact that I’m making a compromise because of my values in this imperfect system? And much of the blame is with development, large corporations, and institutions. 

But also, sometimes I think that people have co-opted narratives around systemic responsibility so much that they absolve themselves of their own individual choices–and that’s not good. But it’s also not productive to sit and despair over your individual choices that are largely forced by systems either. We all have to practice “How do I live in accordance with my values knowing that I’m having to compromise on them for a variety of reasons and that my lines are in different places than other people?” 

I found the discourse around  big law and public interest on campus to be the least productive,  where people going into big law were saying, “They’re just being mean to me. They don’t believe I care.” The way that you get over that is by showing people that you care and then they’ll stop. There will still be occasional people that are purity testing and those are the really ineffective organizers.  That will work itself out after you graduate. But there’s such black and white binary thinking. Let’s get better at holding some complexity.

Roop Patel: Do you have advice for current students? One thing I am noticing is silent coercion and students are unwilling to speak out for a few different reasons. Students have listed concerns such as (1) job loss, (2) immigration/citizenship status, and (3) pushback from the Dean of Students saying that there’s a time and place for protest and Harvard Law is not the time or place. 

Rachel Cohen: Yeah, I totally agree with the things that you’ve identified! 

Citizenship is a huge thing that should make people be careful about being public facing right now. There are mutual aid efforts happening at Harvard and Boston to prepare students to employ attorneys if schools stop providing effective assistance or if people don’t want to work with the schools—especially given the way that the Trump administration is targeting educational institutions as well. 

At a lunch talk with State Senator Lydia Edwards, she made the really valuable point that if you’re an international student, you don’t need to feel responsible to do things that would put you at risk. Rather, think about what skill sets you have that don’t put you at risk. With the huge factor now, don’t feel responsible to do things because it’s very traumatizing to just exist. I think it is also true that this can tip into white saviorism. 

I think that that was a very helpful reminder to think about the corollary that if you’re a white student, think about all the additional protections and privileges that you hold and how to leverage them without tipping into white saviorism. To me, that means that the responsibility for higher risk tolerance actions should largely fall to people with more protections who are also listening to people with fewer protections.  

“Where the fuck is the time and place for effective organizing on rule of law issues if not at the most powerful law school in the world?”

People with fewer protections that want to take on high risk stuff should be elevated because they’re like the most direct to speak on it. But I think it’s already uncommon and it’s going to be very uncommon to have people, especially non-white international students, taking on public facing work right now. 

And I think that’s right because I would not take the risk if there’s a good chance that I will get put in detention without an easy pathway out. When there’s this whole other group of people that does not have that risk at all, those people should do the higher risk activities. Turning to community building,mutual aid, network building, and pressure testing on things—whether that’s fundraising, building affinity spaces, or doing behind the scenes education. 

These are pathways that are very necessary and important. For example, we really need people summarizing what’s happening and  information work behind the scenes because everything is going so fast. Then other people can make public facing action. There’s lots of other things to be done if you are bearing disproportionate individual risk. People should not feel guilty about not wanting to bear disproportionate individual risk because that’s bad organizing if we’re asking people to make moves that are unnecessarily putting their safety in jeopardy. 

If I were to distill down my advice for Harvard students, it would be that you’re not crazy. This place is just the worst place in the world. I mean, it’s not the worst in that I met so many good friends there and you learn so much—but the overwhelming gaslighting of “No, we can’t do anything. This isn’t the time and place.” Where the fuck is the time and place for effective organizing on rule of law issues if not at the most powerful law school in the world? What is the better time and place for that? 

The institution tries to convince you that you’re not powerful because it only wants you to channel power in very specific ways of making more money and being extremely participatory in systems and successful within those systems. The way that the institution wants you to be is just unbelievably troubling. 

To the job piece stuff, there’s public facing organizing that absolutely limits your career options. But I will never get on a call with anyone and tell them not to go into big law.  Number one, people are asking if they should withdraw their summer offers. If this experience has made you realize that you do not want to do this work, that is extremely valid. But if you have nothing else lined up or it isn’t financially feasible, you don’t need to torment yourself until the end of time. You’re not going to be very useful as a summer associate or a first year associate. 

It goes back to building the tolerance for that fact that you’re doing a bad thing. But if we play that back far enough, if you went here, you probably could have gone to a school where you didn’t have to take out loans in the first place. You could have just done that. But people are making that decision to have the doors open from Harvard. And there’s a lot of doors that open from having $50,000 in savings too. If you genuinely think that the doors that will open are worth doing a year or two of work that you fundamentally disagree with and if you’re willing to go in, and say no, and get fired over like drawing lines, that’s okay. 

Where it becomes an issue is going into big law and saying, “Well, I made this decision. So now I have to just do everything. I decided to sell out and go into big law. So now they staff me on  Trump free legal services where you are standing in as an ICE attorney, I guess I just have to do it.” No, you don’t. Just say no. Say no, I’m not working on that and let them fire you. And they probably won’t. And if they do, you still collected your paycheck for that amount of time. Move away from deep binary thinking. 

To bring it back to your question about job prospects. The reason that most people who are leaving are so junior is not a generational divide or anything else. It’s because there’s a lot of agency once you are in these firms. And if you know that that is not a life career for you and you know what your values are and you’re not planning on giving them up, you’ve created an additional place for agency. That’s not an argument to go in and do big law. But if you know that you are going to make that decision financially anyway, there’s much organizing to be done behind the scenes that still has a lot of power and agency that does not limit your big law  job prospects at all.

The headline is you’re not crazy. This is the time and place to be making change. And also they’re trying very hard to convince you that it isn’t. And they’re not just wrong, but doing that intentionally.