When the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison announced on March 20 it had entered into a deal with President Donald Trump to make an executive order targeting the firm go away, Rachel Cohen, a third year associate at another law firm, Skadden Arps, announced her resignation.

Like Paul, Weiss, Skadden was targeted by the Trump administration with a letter threatening an investigation by the Equal Employment & Opportunity Commission over its alleged Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies. After seeing Paul, Weiss bend the knee and being stonewalled by partners at Skadden about how the firm intended to respond to the EEOC letter, Cohen decided to take a stand.

“I resigned because I anticipated that my own firm’s lack of response was indicative of their willingness to cut a deal with the Trump administration if need be,” she said.

Cohen was right. Before Trump even issued an executive order punishing the firm, Skadden cut its own deal on March 28.

Soon a flood of firms would follow Skadden’s lead and make preemptive deals with Trump to eliminate the threat of EEOC investigations and executive orders punishing them. On April 1, Willie Farr cut a deal with Trump. On April 2, Milbank followed suit. And then on April 11, five firms ― Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft ― each entered into deals with the administration.

In each case, the firms promised large sums of pro bono legal work for the administration on mutually agreed upon issues. Paul, Weiss promised to give up $40 million in pro bono hours. As more firms made deals, the totals went up. Milbank, Skadden, Willkie and Cadwalader promised $100 million each while Kirkland, Latham, A&O Shearman and Simpson Thatcher promised $125 million each.

These firms are among some of the largest, most influential and connected in the country. What’s more, among their traditional work is their pro bono representation of vulnerable groups bringing legal challenges against the government: By targeting them, Trump leveled a direct attack on the legal profession and, in particular, its ability to support opposition to his administration’s policies, including those around immigration. The deals divert pro bono resources toward Trump while putting into question whether the firms would continue to offer those services to anyone Trump opposes.

“What he’s building to, and it’s not particularly hidden, is punishing people who do immigration representation, punishing people who represent protestors who were present at Palestine protests,” Cohen said. “And they’re not saying this out loud, but I assume this will spread to public defenders more broadly as well as people that do representation related to reproductive justice.”

Big Law appeared to be bending the knee. But not everyone felt that they could go along. More associates soon followed Cohen’s lead and resigned. Joseph Baio, the longest-serving lawyer at Willkie Farr, became the first and so-far only partner to resign on April 9.

In total, one partner and 11 associates have publicly resigned from firms that cut deals with Trump. The numbers may be small, but each one has attracted attention and kept the story of the firm’s submission to Trump in the headlines. That has shown that even junior lawyers have the power to affect the public’s perception of these deals.

“The firms are shocked that this is still in the news cycle,” Cohen said. “That is so unprecedented. And that is the power of even just a couple of associates leaving and being willing to talk about these things.”

They may not have anticipated that their careers would take this turn, but events have a way of forcing such choices on people.

“I wasn’t planning on quitting,” said Jacqui Pittman, a second-year associate who worked at Kirkland & Ellis’ flagship office in Chicago before resigning. She noted the not-insignificant personal sacrifice involved in leaving these jobs, which are prestigious and highly competitive. “People give up a lot to get this job. I moved here for this job.”

But when she heard that Kirkland had cut a deal with the administration, she knew what she would have to do.

“Once that came out it didn’t feel like a decision,” Pittman said. “It felt like something I had to do when I took the oath for the bar. I was anticipating their decision and when it came out I realized what an incredibly dangerous precedent that it set.”

For Sam Wong, a second-year associate who resigned from Latham, the decision was clear even before his firm cut a deal. At an associates meeting with the entire Washington, D.C., office, Wong said he stated his intention to resign if the firm made a deal with Trump. With feelings of “disappointment” and “betrayal,” Wong publicly resigned in a letter to Latham staff on April 14.

“I never expected either the country or myself to be in this position,” Wong said. “I never expected to have to resign from my job in protest.”

Kevin Decker, a third-year associate in Kirkland’s D.C. office, resigned so that he could have a “clear conscience” and also to follow the example set by Cohen as a model for others.

“That gave confidence to people that you have options,” Decker said. “You don’t have to stay at these firms. And if you stay at these firms you can express how you feel about the agreements.”

Skadden, Kirkland and Latham did not respond to requests for comment about the associates who publicly resigned their jobs in protest of the deals.

These now-former associates all had different reactions to their firms’ decision to strike a deal from disappointment to surprise they were targeted in the first place. Their perception of their former firm colors their views of their former employer post-deal.

Kirkland, the largest firm in the world by revenue, had a culture of “utilitarian speed and efficiency,” according to Pittman. The “eerie” lack of communication within the firm about the deals made Pittman feel that it was going to bend the knee. The firm liked to cast itself as the “biggest and baddest in the industry,” she said, but now she feels that it can’t sustain that reputation.

“I don’t see how they can continue to call themselves the biggest and baddest and use that as their culture with a straight face now that they’ve shown the world what little courage they had,” Pittman said.

Decker, who worked in Kirkland’s D.C. office, was puzzled that Kirkland was even targeted to begin with.

“I’m not sure why Kirkland was chosen instead of other firms since Kirkland had not been known as an opponent of the administration,” he said.

As their former firms cut deals with Trump, other firms targeted with punitive executive orders fought back. Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey all filed lawsuits challenging the orders. In each case, they quickly won temporary restraining orders from judges aghast at Trump’s actions, blocking most of the orders from going into effect.

In the Perkins Coie case, Judge Beryl Howell quickly moved beyond a temporary restraining order to issue a scathing final judgment that Trump’s order was plainly unconstitutional.

“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” Howell wrote.

Trump and his administration’s actions since making these deals to explain what they would ask of the firms further assured the former associates that they had made the right decision.

In public pronouncements and executive orders, the administration progressively expanded on what they would be asking from the law firms that made deals to provide pro bono legal work. Instead of mutually agreed upon issues, the firms would be pushed to do legal work on trade deals, coal leases and defending police officers accused of misconduct.

“We already learned this lesson from ‘If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,’” Wong said, referencing the children’s book. “It’s to no one’s surprise that the Trump administration asked for one thing and it is now rolling out further demands on these law firms.”

As the first to resign, Cohen has used her platform to spread the word about what law firm associates can do, and what Trump’s deals and executive orders targeting the legal profession mean. She put together toolkits for associates and law students on how to respond to Trump’s attacks and deals made by firms. She testified before Democratic members of the House and Senate. And now she has joined, along with her former colleague Brenna Trout Frey, who resigned from Skadden when it announced its deal with Trump, a new law firm headed by Abbe Lowell with the mission of fighting Trump.

Other former associates hope to continue to work at big law firms, but they take into consideration whether those firms are fighting against the attacks on the profession.

“There’s sort of a binary here of firms and legal groups that are standing up for the rule of law, and I want to be at one of those places rather than Kirkland,” Decker said.

While the number of associates resigning has slowed down, all of those who have resigned believe that there will be significant attrition from the firms that cut deals, although those who leave may not publicly state the deals as their reason for doing so.

Cadwaladar has also witnessed “an exodus of lawyers” following its capitulation to Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Those leaving the firm include its counsel, J.B. Howard, who wrote an internal resignation letter protesting the deal.

Jeh Johnson, the former secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama and Paul, Weiss partner, also announced his resignation from the firm on Wednesday, but did not explain why he chose to do so.