Steve's Rules with legendary executive recruiter Steve Nelson from the McCormick Group

Under the Trump Administration the Legal Landscape is Shifting—But So Are Your Opportunities

• Season 2 • Episode 8

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While the current environment is chaotic, savvy government attorneys, particularly those with administrative law experience, may find this the perfect time to make a lateral move into law firm practice. In this episode of Steve’s Rules, we take a deep dive into the legal market implications of the new Trump administration—particularly the regulatory shifts, enforcement priorities, and job market changes that will impact law firms and lawyers. 

From antitrust enforcement and white-collar crime investigations to the rise of administrative law battles and state-level regulations, we break down how law firms and legal professionals can navigate this evolving landscape.

We also touch on an important new resource: Steve and his team at The McCormick Group are launching a Legal Management Transitions Tracker, a monthly trend report on key Director and C-level hires and promotions in the legal sector. If you are a law firm leader or legal recruiter, this is a must-have resource for staying ahead. Subscribe.

Key Topics Covered in This Episode:

  • How the Trump administration’s regulatory approach is reshaping law firm opportunities
  • Why antitrust enforcement is shifting—but not disappearing  
  • The evolving role of white-collar investigations and corporate oversight  
  • How administrative law is becoming a critical battleground*
  • The rise of state-level legal battles amid federal deregulation  
  • Essential career strategies for government attorneys moving into private practice  
  • The importance of building a digital presence for job seekers and legal professionals

And make sure you listen long enough the hear some spot on observational humor from Steve wearing his stand up comic hat.  

* In our discussion of the impact on administrative law related to "Chevron" we were referring to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).   In this landmark decision, the Court overruled the Chevron doctrine, which had previously mandated judicial deference to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes. The Court held that such deference was incompatible with the judiciary's duty to interpret the law.

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McCormick Group

Contact Murray
M Coffey

Murray:

Murray, welcome to Steve's rules, periodic podcast featuring Steve Nelson, executive principal at McCormick group in the law and government affairs practice. My name is Murray Coffey, and I am the principal of M Coffey, a law firm marketing and business development Boutique. For more information, please visit my website at M coffey.net Steve has been an executive recruiter for nearly three decades, and without naming names, he is ready to spill the tea on best practices, and maybe a few not so best practices by firms and candidates that he has seen during his career, recruiting some of the most driven and successful professionals into highly profitable and growing firms. Steve is a former lawyer and journalist and is a fellow of the college of law practice management and a proud son of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Full transparency here, Steve has helped my career immensely through the years and has become something of a career shaman to me and I know many others. Oh, Steve, welcome Murray, another edition of Steve's rules. And we typically are focusing in on broader topics, not necessarily news of the day, kind of topics, because that's not what this is about. However we have seen with the new administration, with the Trump administration coming in, we have seen very substantial, very quick changes and transitions across the federal government in both hiring and firing, and we are reorganizing priorities. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about what the opportunities will probably be for law firms and in light of people who are coming out of government today, and I'll give you a little hint, it's not all doom and gloom. So we're going to try to get everybody centered and calm down a little bit, if we can at least take a step back and really look at the situation as dispassionately as we can. But before we start that, as we have in the past, talked about the kind of intelligence that the McCormick group, generally speaking, with the lead of Steve and some of his partners at McCormick group, have put together over the years, different trackers watching what's going on in different markets, and they're about to release a new report, so we're going to preview it a little bit today. Steve is going to share some nuggets from that. As always, Steve's email is in our show notes. So if you want to get on this list, and I'll tell you as somebody who has received this list in an earlier iteration and will be receiving it going forward, especially for my friends who are directors and C level folk, really critical Intel for you all. So Steve, welcome back. You're calling from as we said when we were talking earlier, you're Florida. Man, for the next couple of months. So Florida. Man, how are things going? What's new?

Steve:

Yeah, I'm in Key West. Which people in Key West deny that we're part of Florida, but technically we are. We're right near the Gulf of America planning. What we've got is we're starting this news feature called legal management transitions. We're going to summarize each month major changes at the C level and director levels and law firms around the US and international basically was just both new positions, plus we're going to feature promotions. People have been promoted. You know, at their current firms. Interestingly, this month is that there have been three new CEOs. Mentioned a couple. It's one in a major firm. Wanted an am law 200 but not a Amol 100 a smaller firm, but none of them were previous coos anywhere else at another law firm. So let me just go through them, just quickly. Morrison Forster is named Brian gross the chief operating officer. He was a Managing Principal and COO of North America for Boston Consulting. He'll be based in San Francisco. Burn Forman hired us their new Chief Operating Officer, Charles Marshall, was the Vice Chancellor and general counsel the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. So you know, academia to and then coveri Subaru Nile House, who was a Executive Director of Global Strategic Growth, and she was also the executive director of the litigation practice, really a practice management director, and she was at Clark Hill in Pittsburgh. She's become the CEO of Bernstein Shure, which is a smallish firm less than 100 lawyers, but not tiny in Portland, Maine. So those are a couple of interesting highlights. We've got several new chief marketing officers and several new chief talent officers, so it's a mix of different people. We're interested in every discipline, marketing, it, practice, management, finance, everything. We're looking forward to this. We're really excited about it. And if you're interested in getting on our. Mailing list, or, of course, telling us about something that has happened to you along those lines, just reach out to me. So

Murray:

thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And just as a show note as well, we're also going to be broadening the field a little bit on this podcast to also begin to address with more regularity, the C level and director level recruiting and kinds of issues like we did a couple of episodes ago with talking about the road to the COO suite. But with that, let's turn our attention now to the federal government. In US. Government has millions of employees. That's not an exaggeration. I saw a stat that said that between the US Government and the State governments across the United States, there's almost 23 million people employed. That's roughly 6% of the US population is engaged in the federal or state government as an employee. Substantial number people, substantial impact economically, but also from a substantive legal standpoint. This is, I think, and Steve check me on this. This bodes, I think, for our law firms out there, especially the ones in DC, but really ones that have tight ties to very federal government oriented practices. So Steve, maybe you could just kick us across the top of where you think those peaks are going to be, and where people who are either out right now from the government or thinking to go out, or maybe being asked to leave, we're hearing a lot about that can be thinking about where they might find the right fit. Okay,

Steve:

so I think I'll start with the overview of where we think the practices are going. It's been predicted this administration will be friendly towards M and A, not as many restrictions, and so forth, and so that. We're expecting a very solid year on the corporate side. Interestingly, what we're hearing in antitrust, which there was some people's concern that there wouldn't be as much antitrust enforcement. And that may be, but this is from the early signs, including a case that was filed last week in this administration against Hewlett Packard, that this will still be a pretty aggressive area for the Trump administration, they will obviously select the targets that they're focused on, which are likely going to be different than the Biden administration targets. But I think that there will be an idea of using the antitrust laws to further their goals, their policy goals. So I think antitrust does not look like it's going to be hampered much at all. Think that interestingly, White Collar is going to change, but so they'll obviously, I think we're going to see, according to everything we're hearing, that there will be some, a lot of investigations of administ former administration officials, but also some of the businesses that have been allied with the former administration. And so I think you're going to see a lot of congressional investigations. You're going to see a lot of just general investigation, on the other hand, sort of big corporate investigations likely to drop. Because I just don't think you're going to see the emphasis on corporate fraud and abuse, I think in general, is not going to be the same as it was under the Biden administration. So I think you're going to see a re shifting of the sort of white collar and government enforcement practices, where I see a lot of activity, is going to be an administrative law. Because right now, they're already challenging the steps that this administration has taken. That's going to continue. I think this is going to be a boon year for federal employment law and and beyond that, even private sector employment law, but particularly federal employment law, there's going to be a lawsuit is fired, based on what we're seeing when the press every day. So I think it's going to be hot. But also on the administrative law side, there's just going to be a lot of activity challenges to what the administration is doing, not just from public interest groups, but from industry groups. Because a couple of points I want to make here. One is a lot of industries have embraced the federal government role in regulation because they can prevent the states from becoming too aggressive. And now, if the federal government drops out, there may be a feeling among some members of particular industries that says we don't want this because it's going to hurt us in the long run and so forth. Now obviously this administration, I think, is going to really push for preemption of state law as well. So that will be out there, but that's more litigation, more litigation, right? So I think it's going to be very wild west. I think in. Regulation in my and I want to make one other point, which is that the chevron case last year, which was obviously seen as a pro business decision because it was harnessing the federal government's approach to regulation, I think now the government will be hoist on its own petard in their efforts to deregulate will be challenging the courts. The courts have a broader oversight based on Chevron of whether to defer to the government agency, and so you're going to see a different attitude, particularly if you keep in mind that at least 50% of the lower judges were appointed by either President Obama or President Biden. The record in both the Trump administration and the earlier turns in this administration is that the lower courts are not going to be that friendly to this administration and this approach that they're taking now Supreme Court, obviously, we know what the composition is there, and you know, there could very well be a pro Trump decision, as has been the case, but very low percentage of cases actually get to the Supreme Court. They can't take every case. So I think you're going to see a lot of litigation and a lot of differing opinions. I think that it's a boon to administrative law for practitioners.

Murray:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and I've been waiting for the shoe to drop on the chevron decision for a little while. I thought it was going to operate under the surface, because administrative law operates under the surface, but it may really come up now in ways that I don't think the people who challenged it actually thought it was going to have. And you raised a really good point about the state agencies. And yes, the Trump administration is going to go after preemption, to be sure, but they're not going to be able to preempt everything, and that's going to create the dreaded patchwork of regulations. One of the things about federal regulations is, you know what they are, from coast to coast, right? But California now is going to say, Okay, we've got different environmental regulations the feds are going to have. Illinois is going to have different employment regulations than the feds are going to have. And it's not just the attorneys general challenging preemption, but you know, we're going to see state house getting more active. The Democrats have been putting a lot of people into the pipeline at the state houses now, which they ignored for a few decades. They're putting more people in there. So it's going to be an interesting time and change for law and law firms is a good thing in terms of business development and opening up. People are going to come out of government who are going to have opportunities. But there's also going but there's also going to be people who are at other firms today who have that kind of experience that are going to be valuable as well. And maybe even talk a little bit about how the people who are thinking about leaving government, or maybe have been asked to leave, or have left, what they need to be doing to make sure that their qualifications are as apparent as they are, and figuring out how to package themselves. Because we've talked about this in the past, about how people who are out there need to think about almost productizing themselves to make themselves attractive to a firm. So

Steve:

it was interesting. We have been working with people, really, since the middle of last year, looking people who are already decided to make a change, no matter which way the election it went. And then, of course, many more once the election was decided, and we were working it, and it was pretty slow in the pre election, and then the flood gates opened, with a lot of people looking to leave then. And you combine that with year end issues for law firms, law firms don't have the bandwidth to cover this even in the best of circumstances, so there was a real bottleneck. And we were not hearing we were either getting some no interest, because they had people coming back and so forth, but we're getting a lot of just can't even address this right now. We've got too much going on, um, and I think that that has continued, although I think we're starting to see a little ease up on it. I think that what I believe is that the administrative law, anybody with an administrative law expertise, really proven administrative will be a little more valuable than we may have thought because of what this administration is doing, because it's opening it up everything. And it's not just opening it up for the employees who are getting terminated. It's really opening it up for different kinds of challenges. So I think we're still seeing a delay. We're not getting a lot of activity now. We're thinking that it'll be more two to three months from now, but one of the things that we've noticed and surprised me was the ability of this administration to get people in place in both their both the agencies and the lawyers the agencies and so that's. Has been done more quickly than in past administrations, including the first Trump administration. And so therefore those people are getting in place, and that means the law firms are starting to lose some of their folks to this administration. Administration, yeah, and even though we had thought that there would not be as many sort of people in law firms willing to go in the administration? I think it's higher than we thought, because I think there is, I think they see opportunity going into the government. And Amen, I think, because it's going to be a strong year, and because I think it's going to be focused a lot on the administrative side, I think there may be a rosier picture than we originally thought, although I will say that since I've heard from so many people coming out who got the administrative law background, it's still going to be a tight market that might not be as tight as we

Murray:

thought. So. So I'm a government attorney. I've spent the last 10 years of my career working in a government administrative role. I don't have a book of business. I don't have a massive network. I am the biggest expert you can possibly think of in X, Y or Z area of administrative law. What do I need to be doing now, Steve, to make sure that those folks who are out there who are looking to hire these people and hire this expertise, and what do they need to start doing? How we've talked about,

Steve:

yeah, I think it's and we've talked about the business plan before. So everybody, I think that at the very least, if you're looking to enter the private sector and you're just starting the process, get some thoughts down on paper as to what your value is, what you're going to produce, and does it fit within what law firms want? I think that's really important. I think that it's really that understanding of it. If you can, if you can focus on a an industry sector, it's better than if you're just a, you know, generalist administrative lawyer, for example, if you've done healthcare or you've done content, the more you can do in areas that is industry focused, I think, improves your situation. And you should focus your efforts that way, even though you might have a very strong background in general, it's always good to to say I can become a health care industry lawyer or a social media industry lawyer, right, or a financial service right, something along those lines. It's really important to think industry, not just think specialty, yeah.

Murray:

And I would add, just putting my marketer hat on a little bit here, I would add, also start to establish a digital footprint for yourself, to make yourself findable, if you will. And so that could be as simple as just posting a few things to LinkedIn every couple of days. Doesn't need to be a ton. Maybe write an article outlets like law 360 look for expert commentary all the time. That's a great journal for the law firm industry. It's read by everybody in the industry. But don't sit back and wait. Make your plan. But also get out there and make sure that you're being heard. You get a chance to speak at a conference. It doesn't have to be the perfect conference. You probably need some resume builders. Is the message that I'm making here, and personally, I've done it, and it's been great, and I think that the more you can market yourself out there, the better. And the other thing to think about is that what we're starting to see, and I don't have an answer for this yet, folks, but I'm looking at it. People are beginning to use artificial intelligence like chat, GPT, Gemini, etc, to do web searches, rather than Google, rather than the traditional search tools that we've seen, and that's good news and bad news. The good news is you get much more interesting, robust results when you do that. The bad news is, if you're not out there, if you don't have content out there, you will be almost invisible to the AI and but AI can be your friend, because AI can come back and give a much more fulsome set of results than a Google search can do. That's my two cents on or four cents on that. Yeah, let

Steve:

me add just a couple of points to that. One is your LinkedIn profile is really important. I see too many that are just slapped ash. Put it together. You don't have the dates, you don't have all your jobs, or you have one sentence descriptors. It's a type of resume. It may not be like your resume, but it really should focus in on the key points. So that's number one, is you should definitely take the time and do that. And second, and this is what you were talking about, what I find effective is, and I write a lot, but I don't write it. Week, close to that. But I find that if I see an article, I like to be able to get two sentences, three sentences about why I think this article is important. That is really important and you've and the way LinkedIn works is that the more you focus your discussion about somebody else and not yourself, right? The better it is. If you're congratulating a colleague, or just talking about an article that you liked, that you saw, and giving some observations. LinkedIn seems to really value that, rather than a lot of self promotion.

Murray:

Yeah, and, and I know from my friends who are in house recruiters, that LinkedIn has become probably one of their most reliable tools. Unless they're working with somebody like Steve and his team, it really has become one of the most useful tools. And there's a lot of tips out there about how to make sure that you've optimized your LinkedIn bio. You don't need to hire somebody to help you write it, or you're skilled enough to do it yourself, but there's some simple things, and Steve's right about reposting. If you repost, don't just repost it into your network. That's not enough. You have to repost it. You have to put in some comments. That's how you begin to start moving up the chain with LinkedIn. And it doesn't have to be expansive. It can just be great article on on this area of law. I've know people who decided they want to be the experts in LIBOR, and they just, every week, they they put out two, two LinkedIn posts related to LIBOR, and guess what? They became LIBOR experts, or at least perceived that way, right? I think I know that person. I think you do. I think you do know that person, and that person is on this subscription list. Just give me a call. So what else? Anything else before we, uh,

Steve:

just a couple of points. One is make sure your resume and your LinkedIn bio are consistent, but leave something out, because that's more of a maybe a more of a job like HR kind of tip. But I think it's true for somebody who is just trying to raise their profile. Another thing is use hashtags and learn what they mean and how to best utilize I must say, I need the primer on that myself, so at some time, you can help me or refer me to something.

Murray:

Yep, absolutely, we're working that together. So in some it's a crazy time, and we're not going to dive into the personal politics of this. It just is what it is for all of us. And crazy times can bring up opportunity. One thing I know for sure is that opportunity never presents itself at a convenient time. Don't say it's not the right time. If that's your reason for not doing something, you'll never do anything. So hang in there and know that there is opportunity for you as a government lawyer or for our recruiters who are out there be thinking about what the opportunities are for you to bring in the right people to your firm, bring in a level of expertise that the clients are going to be needing. They may not have a great big book of business, but if they can answer that critical question for a client, they're worth their weight in gold. So that's it. It kind of a heavy session this time, Steve. So, as we've done in the past, and as people may or may not know about Steve, his side hustle is that he's been for quite a while a stand up comedian and a working stand up comedian. And so once in a while, we like to end on a high note with a joke from Steve. So Steve, this goes back to your Florida man, Thatcher, right now, but Steve, that's right, what do you got? Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, I'm in Key West Florida, and the other day, I was driving on Roosevelt Boulevard, which is the main drag of Key West and I saw a sign for a place called advanced urgent care. And my immediate thought was, isn't that a little redundant urgent care? You've got an advanced problem when you're doing urgent care. And I don't think too many people actually go to a place called beginners urgent

Steve:

Well, Steve, always a pleasure. We'll get this trigger on quickly and anything else before we before we close. No, just take a look at our management transitions and subscribe and send us your news. So that's about all I can say. Keep

Murray:

those cards and letters coming, folks. Okay, thanks. Bye, bye, bye.