President Donald Trump had a message Monday for the legal profession, “The law firms have to behave themselves.”

Those comments, made to reporters at the White House, came on the heels of a memo directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.”

He also directed her to review the conduct of attorneys involved in litigation against the federal government over the past eight years.

The memo prompted widespread condemnation, including a joint statement Monday from the New York City Bar Association and several others, stating, “Attempts to intimidate or penalize lawyers for representing clients whose interests do not align with those of the government are antithetical to our democracy, violate the rule of law, chill attorneys from fulfilling their ethical and professional obligations, and undermine our system of justice.”

The White House memo, dated Saturday, followed Trump striking an agreement Thursday with the law firm Paul Weiss.

In an executive order on March 14, Trump had threatened the firm with crippling sanctions because of its diversity hiring practices and for employing an attorney, Mark Pomerantz, who worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s hush money case against him.

Among other concessions, the firm agreed to provide $40 million in free legal services to causes that Trump supports, like antisemitism and veterans services.

More than 140 alumni of Paul Weiss signed a letter of protest Monday.

“The values that are reflected in that decision are not the values of the firm that I worked for,” attorney John Delehanty, one of the letter’s signatories, said in an interview. “Paul Weiss is known as a firm you hire to fight injustice — not just injustice, but to fight for you, whoever you are.”

Whether someone is a criminal defendant, a civil defendant or a company, “you want them to put up a fight,” he added. “This is not putting up a fight.”

In an email to staff over the weekend, Brad Karp, chairman of Paul Weiss, wrote that Trump’s “executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients.”

Critics believe the firm could have fought the administration and won.

On Monday, Trump suggested other big firms will also soon surrender.

“We have others that want to make a settlement also, having to do with the election and other things,” he told reporters. “They behaved very badly, very wrongly. And I appreciate the one. You know, these are the biggest firms, and they all came back realizing that they did wrong.”

Meanwhile, advocates are sounding alarms.

“If you destroy the legal profession, then you don’t have a democracy. You don’t have checks and balances,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said. “And it’s very scary when large law firms feel so bullied and so intimidated that they capitulate.”