As the erstwhile “Monday blogger” for the BLPB, I have written Labor Day posts over the years on a variety of Labor Day topics–from the history surrounding the holiday, to the labor of law teaching. Last year, I wrote about gratitude on Labor Day. This year, I carry that gratitude theme forward in a specific context: appreciation for lawyers and for being a lawyer.

I know that the holiday is not generally seen as a moment in the calendar year in which we step back to honor service professionals. As I have noted in prior Labor Day posts, the workers intended to be honored are those who made our country prosperous in and around the time of the Industrial Revolution–working long, hard hours for low pay. The Department of Labor’s website offers a summary description.

Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.

I mean no disrespect to that original intention by focusing on lawyers here. I continue to believe that honoring the many workers providing economic production and essential public services is so very important, and I will have them in my thoughts in my quieter moments today. But it is in a similar spirit of honoring the downtrodden that I also take a moment out to celebrate those in the legal profession–laborers who face new challenges in our work.

Lawyers may work long hours (I certainly did and do), but their labor is not typically as dangerous, physical, or underpaid as that of industrial and low-wage service workers. Rather, the challenges to the legal profession in the current moment emanate from governmental and political forces external to lawyering–but very much central to the work lawyers do and the clients they represent. The news media have covered the matter (here, here, and elsewhere), nonprofits have rallied to the cause (as represented here, here, and elsewhere), lawyers and other have protested, law professors have publicly commented, law firms have negotiated deals with the executive branch of the federal government, and lawsuits have been brought, including by our national professional association. I earlier wrote here on the BLPB about a teaching moment I took advantage of in my Business Associations course back in the spring relating to law firm settlements with the executive branch.

Business lawyers are among those affected by law firm decisions to duck-and-cover, bring legal actions, or sign settlement agreements, although these members of the profession may not be at the forefront of everyone’s minds. As a business lawyer who worked in Big Law for 15 years (for a firm that signed a settlement agreement with the executive branch) who also engages in pro bono legal work, the attacks on lawyers and the impacts of those attacks strike at my professional core. As an educator of future lawyers, the attacks take on an even greater professional importance for me.

In a recently published essay in the California Law Review Online, friend-of-the-BLPB Chris Hampson and his coauthor Elise Maizel describe well the tension that the profession faces in acceding to presidential demands that impact the nature of a lawyer’s practice and the identity of their clientele (with footnote omitted).

[D]eep-seated values of the legal profession stand in direct conflict with the President’s vision . . . . The Model Rules of Professional Conduct, affirmed in states from Massachusetts to Florida, proclaim that “[a]n independent legal profession is an important force in preserving government under law, for abuse of legal authority is more readily challenged by a profession whose members are not dependent on government for the right to practice.” The settlements, though, undercut this core function. If Big Law firms agree to represent police departments or federal agencies (say, DHS or ICE), they may conflict themselves out of representing victims of official misconduct against those same entities. This precise concern motivated the American Bar Association to file its own lawsuit against what it calls a “Law Firm Intimidation Policy” by the administration.

The essay further offers that “[t]hroughout all of this, the call . . . is to preserve the independence of the private bar to stand up to the state against the abuse of power.” It is a quick read. I recommend it.

It is with all of this in mind that lawyers will be prominent among the workers that I honor today. I stand among you. I stand with you. And I stand up for the value of an independent legal profession–one that can speak Truth to Power.