Trump, Mergers and AI: A Tumultuous Year in the World of Big Law

It's not a very controversial statement to say that Donald Trump's attacks on law firms were the biggest Big Law story in 2025. But, according to the guests on today's episode of our podcast, On The Merits, the ramifications of those attacks are still playing out and may spill over into next year and beyond.

Bloomberg Law editors Chris Opfer and Alessandra Rafferty said the attacks are still affecting the decisions firms make, or don't make, in hard-to-detect ways—even though the president is no longer actively lobbing punitive executive orders at firms.

The two Big Law editors discuss how this is playing out and also whether—and why—we may see more firms merge in 2026. They also get into how the legal industry will be affected if we see an AI bubble burst.

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