DoD launches review of legal offices. Experts warn it could thin ranks of experienced lawyers.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has launched a “ruthless” review of how the military’s legal offices are organized, saying Pentagon legal shops should be to be measured against one standard: whether it makes the military more lethal.

Hegseth framed the review as an effort to improve efficiency by addressing overlapping responsibilities, uncertain reporting relationships and inefficient allocation of resources across the military’s legal enterprise, which includes thousands of uniformed judge advocates and civilian attorneys.

Under the plan, Hegseth said the military’s Judge Advocate General Corps should focus on areas like warfighting, military justice, operational law and the law of armed conflict, or “everything that sharpens the edge in large-scale combat,” while civilian lawyers would support non-operational functions, such as acquisitions, civilian personnel and IP.

“Over 20 years, legal shops across the services have grown bloated and duplicative. They’ve muddied lines of authority and pulled critical judge advocates away from what matters most — advising commanders,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social media platform X.

“Scrub it clean, cut duplication and bureaucracy, clarify roles and reporting, no more moral ambiguity. Align functions so that military legal stays laser focused on warfighting and readiness. Let civilian lawyers handle non-operational stuff. We laid out our recommended split — military matters to JAGs and [staff judge advocates], civilian to general counsels, with room for limited shared areas like standards of conduct or [Freedom of Information Act] and privacy if it makes sense for the services,” he added.

The effort is part of a broader push to shift the department from what he has described as “tepid legality” toward “maximum lethality.”

While reducing duplication and clarifying responsibilities could improve efficiency, some legal experts say the review will likely be used to thin out the ranks of military lawyers, push out experienced attorneys offering independent legal opinions and replace them with “box checkers.” 

“There’s probably some truth to the fact that GS employees and uniformed JAGs have overlapping responsibilities and overlapping billets, and there’s work being done by both that could be done by one or the other. Restructuring or reorganizing to clearly differentiate and delineate who does what does sound like a prudent allocation of scarce resources. The truth is it’s probably done to intimidate the institutional knowledge,” Sean Timmons, a managing partner at the Tully Rinckey law firm, told Federal News Network.

“The intent is to thin out the ranks considerably and get people to retire permanently and just disappear entirely. I think that’s the intent, and the reason for that is there’s a lot of institutional resistance within people who’ve been around prior administrations, and the impediment from institutional knowledge is probably a significant roadblock,” he added.

The overhaul comes after Hegseth fired top military lawyers, labeling them as “roadblocks” to commander-in-chief orders. 

“The commanders ultimately make a decision on what they want to do, but the attorneys have a right under their ethical guidelines to advise what they think is legal and not legal. Attorneys don’t make the ultimate decision. If the commander wants to override the advice of the attorney, they can do so. It’s just the attorney’s advice. The law says we can do this and we can do that, and we shouldn’t do this. If you do do this, you risk legal exposure, you risk legal liability. I think that’s irked a lot of senior leadership, to a significant extent and they are trying to get more ‘yes’ men,” Timmons said.

Hegseth directed the military services to submit reports within 45 days and implement any changes within six months. 

“Delineate functions, review component distribution and education, recommend fixes to kill redundancies and to boost efficiency, and then implement it fast,” Hegseth said. 

Timmons said the services can come back with a much-reduced JAG Corps.

“A lot of the positions are appropriated, they don’t have to fill them. They can reallocate the resources and say, ‘I actually don’t need all these people, so let’s get rid of half of them.’ And then you’re going to have a lot of gap. And a lot of ‘prioritize what needs to be done versus what doesn’t need to be done.’ That’s something that leadership can certainly do. They can certainly gut the resources available and reduce the size of the JAG Corps considerably,” Timmons said.

Meanwhile, over the past year, dozens of military lawyers have been pulled away from their duties to support this administration’s broader priorities. Last year, Hegseth began detailing military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys in offices handling immigration enforcement — the Defense Department could detail up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department as temporary immigration judges. 

Dozens of military lawyers have also been temporarily assigned to serve as federal prosecutors supporting law enforcement surges in Minneapolis.

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