By David Thomas
(Reuters) - Rank-and-file attorneys in the federal government fear major budget cuts when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office and are hunting for private-sector jobs in unusually high numbers, five legal recruiters told Reuters.
Each new administration sparks an exodus of political appointees and other senior legal officials, but the recruiters said they are also hearing from far more lower-level, career government lawyers this year.
"It absolutely feels different than the transition to the first Trump administration," said Rachel Nonaka, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attorney-turned-recruiter in Washington.
Another Washington headhunter, Dan Binstock, said government attorneys have approached his firm Garrison at five times the normal post-election rate, and far more of them are career civil servants.
"The level of uncertainty is like nothing we've seen," said Binstock, who has been a recruiter for 20 years.
More than 44,000 licensed attorneys serve in the federal government, according to March data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. About a third of those lawyers work in the Justice Department, and fewer than 400 of them are non-career political appointees.
The Department of Education, which Trump has claimed he would try to abolish, employs nearly 600 lawyers. The number of lawyers in all cabinet-level agencies grew by about 2,500 during both the Trump and Biden administrations.
This month, Trump created a new unofficial Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and former biotech executive Vivek Ramaswamy, who argued last week that executive actions to lift regulations could pave the way for mass reductions in the federal workforce.
"The Trump Administration will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars," transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Trump has accused government lawyers of frustrating his first-term agenda and faced two federal criminal indictments by what he described as a politicized Biden Justice Department. His nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, has called for an investigation into how those cases were prosecuted.
"The prosecutors will be prosecuted. The bad ones. The investigators will be investigated," Bondi told Fox News last year.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in June rejected accusations by House Republicans that he had politicized the criminal justice system and accused them of peddling conspiracy theories that could endanger federal law enforcement officers.
GOING PRIVATE
Jesse Panuccio, who served as acting associate attorney general during the first Trump administration, said at an event hosted by the conservative Federalist Society this month that civil servants' job is to advance their elected leaders' agenda.
"If they don't want to carry it out, there are a lot of great jobs out there in the private sector," said Panuccio, who is now a partner at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
Washington boasts one of the country's top legal markets, with dozens of firms that take advantage of the revolving door between government and corporate law. Senior lawyers leaving the Biden administration may have an easy time finding jobs at companies and big law firms, which are flush with cash this year.
But for more junior lawyers with narrow specialties, finding private-sector jobs may not be so easy.
Not all government legal jobs easily translate to the private sector, said Jeff Jaeckel, vice chair of law firm Morrison Foerster. He said large law firms like his want attorneys with a "very specific and valuable skill set" to serve clients, such as advising financial institutions facing regulatory scrutiny.
In contrast, a government lawyer who reviews nuclear-treaty texts may lack commercial appeal, one recruiter said.
Recruiters also warned that civil servants this year may be competing for jobs directly with their own more experienced bosses.
"They'll lose," Nonaka said.
For those that fail to find new employers, the new administration may bring less change to some jobs than anticipated.
"I've been through a lot of different administrations," said Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy U.S. attorney general under Trump and as Maryland's U.S. attorney under both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama.
"Most of the work of the department goes on unaffected."