The Trump administration has seen a mass exodus of more than 10,000 government lawyers, with roughly one in five attorneys who worked in the federal workforce at the end of 2024 no longer working for the administration by March 2026, a new analysis from the New York Times found.
Across multiple departments, President Donald Trump pushed lawyers out of government work as he sought to reduce the number of federal employees, get rid of entire agencies and pressure attorneys to swiftly implement his agenda regardless of constitutionality.
The Department of Education, which Trump is seeking to close permanently, lost more than 50 percent of its lawyers who were employed before Trump was inaugurated, according to the analysis. The Justice Department, which the president has used to go after his political opponents, has seen a 21 percent decrease in its attorney count.
The only department to gain lawyers was the Department of Homeland Security, which required more litigation due to the spike in immigration cases as a result of Trump’s mass deportation plan.
The layoffs, firings and voluntary departures outpaced the number of lawyers who were hired in the administration, too, leaving some areas of the government understaffed and now scrambling to hire new talent.
Last year, the administration purged lawyers in the Justice Department who worked on litigation that did not align with Trump’s agenda. Attorneys assigned to prosecutions against January 6 rioters or the president himself were fired. Career prosecutors who refused to give in to the administration’s demands to indict Trump’s enemies were removed and replaced.
Some lawyers voluntarily left the Justice Department upon seeing the unprecedented pressure coming from officials to execute on Trump’s agenda.
Now, the Justice Department is offering $25,000 signing bonuses and lowering its standard for new hires to attract new talent.
But new lawyers, who would typically jump at the opportunity to work in government jobs, are reportedly more reluctant to take on the work of an administration utilizing its resources to carry out Trump’s personal agenda.
“A lot of people my age are asking, ‘Is it worth getting a job, and will that help career-wise – having one year of Trump administration experience on your résumé?’” Matthew Duray, a conservative Republican who finished his first year at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, told the New York Times.
The Department of Education is also attempting to hire back staff that it let go of last year. Secretary Linda McMahon told senators in April that she was “bringing back many of those lawyers” who were part of reductions-in-force to litigate a backlog of civil rights complaints.
Within his first year in office, Trump sought to implement policies that raised significant legal questions – such as attempting to get rid of birthright citizenship, expand executive authority, deploy the National Guard into U.S. cities during protests and more. Lawyers in the government have been asked to defend them regardless of constitutionality.
Recently, the top lawyer in the Treasury Department left his job after the DOJ announced it would create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that would allow those who believe they were unfairly prosecuted to obtain monetary relief from taxpayers. That could include January 6 rioters who were pardoned by the president last year.
