The Financial Times interviewed 35 people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about, and summarized their views. (Most of them spoke anonymously.) I quoted extensively from the FT’s reporting in the immediately preceding post. I would like to add a few points.
First, while it’s clearly correct to view Trump’s actions against the law firms as thuggish extortion, it is, nevertheless, an odd form of extortion.
It’s as if Joe Bonanno didn’t want money or anything of much economic value—he just wanted you to go out in public and kiss his ring, and then he would leave you alone.
Second, as long as some firms are resisting—and they are—and as long as the courts are standing firm, Trump’s extortion stands on legally shaky ground. That implies several things, including (i) if Trump’s demands become impossible to meet, Paul Weiss can always do a 180, and (ii) if and when it becomes too hot to be seen kissing Trump’s right, Paul Weiss can also do a 180. Not saying they will. Not saying when they will. I’m saying it’s a distinct possibility.
A propos the question of which side of history you want to choose: Trump and Musk humiliated themselves in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court election; Republican margins drastically diminished in two red districts in Florida; and Trump is about to cause a recession with his tariffs.
Third, for some people, the love of big money is akin to heroin addiction or gambling addiction. For those folks, if forced to choose between keeping their big money and acting dishonorably or giving up some of their money in order to do the right thing, it’s not really a choice.
For others—as the FT article makes clear—it’s now a choice between making a lot of money while choosing the wrong side of history, versus making somewhat less money but saving your soul.
Some people will actually want to save their souls. Others will choose the right side when it becomes highly unpopular to pick the wrong side. As is just about to happen.
The Financial Times spoke with a large number of knowledgeable folks, and has produced the most insightful reporting that I have seen on l’affaire Paul Weiss. The FT writes,
In the mid-1980s, Arthur Liman was almost certainly the most acclaimed corporate lawyer in America.
As a star dealmaker at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Liman negotiated on behalf of corporate raiders such as Ron Perelman and defended “junk bond king” Michael Milken in federal court.
But he also won a reputation as a dedicated part-time public servant. Liman led high-profile investigations into the Attica prison riot in the 1970s and of President Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.
Rising through the ranks at that time was Brad Karp, a Harvard law graduate who joined Paul Weiss in 1985. A quarter-century later, Karp would take the helm of the firm, which has since grown to 1,200 lawyers strong. He explicitly moulded it in Liman’s image: a decisive presence across corporate law practices, with lawyers who carry an ethos of public service, seriousness and sobriety.
Yet within a few days last month, that carefully constructed edifice was challenged at its core.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order that in effect banned Paul Weiss from appearing in federal courts and cases over claims that its work on progressive causes undermined the judicial system and that its pro-diversity hiring policies were illegal. The edict threatened the survival of Paul Weiss, Karp claimed.
Paul Weiss is not the only firm to have been targeted by the Trump administration, and judges have since frozen critical parts of similar orders against Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Perkins Coie for being illegal.
But rather than litigate, Karp cut a deal with Trump that cancelled the executive order in exchange for concessions including $40mn worth of pro bono legal services on issues important to the president.
The deal Karp signed sent shockwaves through the American legal establishment because it highlights the growing identity crisis among many of the larger law firms — especially those with a strong connection to Wall Street.
The Financial Times spoke to 35 corporate lawyers and legal insiders for this story, although many requested anonymity due to concerns about retaliation from the president and his associates.
Within Paul Weiss, some lawyers in the litigation department — once its key strength — were disturbed to see a powerful institution swiftly cede the high ground, especially one that had the firepower within its own ranks to fight, say people with direct knowledge of the matter. But many of the lawyers in its ascendant mergers and acquisitions and private equity groups were relieved. Ultimately, there was unanimity among the senior management to settle.
Over the past two decades, dealmaking has become a much more important part of the business models of many of the larger firms, buoyed in part by the explosive growth of the private equity industry and hedge funds. This shift has brought with it a coterie of star lawyers and pay packages that mirror those of their Wall Street clients.
The threats from the Trump administration are playing into this culture clash between the litigation business — where some lawyers would take it as a point of pride to be seen standing up to the government — and the deals lawyers, who tend to be more focused on the short-term flow of transactions and whose incentives are to keep out of the government’s crosshairs.
The dilemma that Paul Weiss faced is now being felt in other parts of the industry as Trump broadens his assault on the sector. While some such as Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale have resisted, others have not; Skadden Arps, an arch-rival to Paul Weiss for many of its corporate clients, reached a deal with Trump to offer $100mn worth of pro bono services to avoid being hit by an executive order.
On Tuesday, Willkie Farr & Gallagher reached a similar agreement to the one Skadden struck, becoming the third major firm to forge a deal with the White House.
The industry is divided over how to respond. While a large number of small and medium-sized firms are willing to support Perkins Coie in its legal effort to fight sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, the Financial Times revealed at the weekend that not one of the 20 top law firms in the US — most of which have large dealmaking businesses — has so far given their “unconditional support” to the effort.
Although Paul Weiss was the first elite law firm to buckle to Trump’s demands, several leaders from rival firms told the Financial Times privately that they would cut similar deals if targeted with an executive order.
Karp told his colleagues that there was “no right answer” to the administration’s threats. “It is very easy for commentators to judge our actions from the sidelines,” he wrote in an email. “But no one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.” …
For Karp, who has chaired Paul Weiss since 2008, the attack has represented a brutal personal reversal. An outspoken Wall Street supporter of the Democratic party, he had helped raise millions of dollars for Kamala Harris. Had she won, Karp was in the running to be US attorney-general, the highest ranking lawyer in America, according to multiple Democratic party operatives and donors.
His decision to cut a deal with the man he had worked tirelessly to keep out of office does not represent an ideological shift, according to people briefed on the matter. In Karp’s mind, the livelihoods of his thousands of employees were at stake.
One person close to Karp says the decision was excruciatingly painful for the 65-year-old: “He wasn’t just thinking about his own interests, he did it for the thousands of people who work there: the secretaries, the associates, the young partners who would have their financial lives adversely affected if the deal did not go through.”
Shortly after Trump targeted Perkins Coie and Covington, Karp contacted the heads of several law firms to try to organise support for them. The response was almost non-existent, and also failed to materialise when the White House issued an executive order against Paul Weiss.
“Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys,” he wrote in the email to employees of the firm after he reached a deal with Trump.
Once Karp realised there was no united front to fight the executive order, the pressure grew to find an alternative solution. Some clients warned the firm’s partners that unless the matter was resolved swiftly, they would move their business elsewhere. Rumours swirled that competitors were circling Paul Weiss’s top talent, ready to pounce whenever the opportunity arose.
Under mounting pressure, Karp travelled to Washington in mid-March to meet Trump to plead for clemency. During the meeting at the Oval Office, in a move that was not expected by Karp, the president patched in on speaker Robert Giuffra, the co-chair of rival firm Sullivan & Cromwell and a Trump donor, to help hammer out a truce.
Karp swallowed his pride and agreed to the terms imposed by Trump. People close to Karp said that Paul Weiss did not actually make any big concession but agreed that the symbolism of what went down at the White House, while demeaning, was ultimately pragmatic.
“We’ve used Paul Weiss forever and . . . we would have had to seek new counsel if they didn’t settle,” says a person working at a company that regularly hires Paul Weiss and has ties with the federal government. “Brad did the right thing, although we realise it must have been humiliating for him and the legal industry . . . the problem isn’t Brad but it’s Trump.”
Yet Paul Weiss’s need to strike a deal with the administration in the first place is in part a symptom of how the law firm has morphed in recent decades into a mainstay of Wall Street, with salaries and culture to match.
Paul Weiss is one of a handful of firms that has created a thriving free-agent market for lawyers. Partners a decade ago would make perhaps $3mn or $4mn a year and would enjoy lifetime employment and generous pensions.
With the growth of private equity firms, hard-knuckled hedge funds and a regular churn of multibillion-dollar corporate acquisitions, a small set of lawyers now command eight-figure pay packages and have no reluctance about jumping firms for the highest bidder. Karp played the poaching game as aggressively as anyone.
Since Karp took over, Paul Weiss has evolved into a transactional powerhouse attracting top-tier corporate lawyers from rivals, such as the star dealmaker Scott Barshay, who joined from Cravath, Swaine & Moore to propel Paul Weiss’s M&A business.
But today’s lavishly paid top talent are less likely to display allegiance. “Karp saw a clear and present [danger] that star partners there would defect to other peer firms and take very lucrative business with them,” says John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School. “M&A stars are unique and carry the keys to Fort Knox with them.” People close to Barshay say he had no intention to leave regardless of the decision.
One lawyer who has gone up against Paul Weiss put it more bluntly: “There’s too much fucking money. When a Big Law partnership is $2mn a year, people can have some principles because the fall isn’t so bad.” The calculation changes entirely, the person says, “when they are making $20mn a year”. …
Under Karp’s leadership, the firm has often been a ruthless advocate for the powerful. Its biggest clients include Apollo Global Management and Goldman Sachs, while it has also represented members of the Sackler family, who founded Purdue Pharma, the pharmaceutical behemoth that has been accused by prosecutors of stoking the US opioid crisis.
Indeed, one of the considerations for the firm was its stable of private equity clients, many of whom are Republicans. As one partner puts it, if the firm only acted for clients whose ethics they agreed with then they would have no clients.
Some in the industry see Paul Weiss’s concession to Trump as a compromise of its values.
The firm’s history is steeped in contributions to dismantling segregation, defending reproductive and LGBT+ rights, and challenging the death penalty, and it maintains an image of strong social consciousness.
Given all that, many of the lawyers and people working in adjacent industries who spoke to the FT say it would have been the best-placed firm to set an example by taking the fight to Trump.
“As lawyers, we need to be really stepping up and doing just the opposite of what the administration wants,” says Jessie Weber, managing partner at Brown Goldstein & Levy, a mid-sized firm with a big civil rights practice. “But certainly, it will take the whole legal community stepping into that role, and that’s what I hope to see.”
During Trump’s first term, leaders at Paul Weiss stood up to the administration. Karp himself co-wrote an op-ed in 2018 accusing the government of violating the law.
Around that time, a team of Paul Weiss lawyers volunteered to provide counsel travellers from countries affected by the administration’s Muslim ban, says Erin Elmouji, a partner at Mancuso Brightman who previously worked at Paul Weiss.
“Standing up for the underprivileged and the voiceless is something Paul Weiss has committed to over and over again over the years,” she says. Reaching a deal with the White House “has made it a lot harder for other firms and organisations to stand up and fight [governmental over-reach], which is essential to preserve the independence of the legal system”.
Some critics of Karp’s deal say that in the long term, the cost of settling will outweigh the short-term benefits.
Reaching an agreement with Trump raises the question of whether Paul Weiss can independently advocate for the positions of its clients, Elmouji says, and ultimately makes the law firm vulnerable to further demands from the administration.
“Would you really hire Paul Weiss to go to war against the government?” says one lawyer at a rival firm. “Would you hire Karp to go up against the DoJ [Department of Justice] right now, when he just folded when his own interests were at stake?”
A litigator who has close ties with many colleagues at Paul Weiss rejects this as half of the firm’s business involves interacting regularly with federal and state regulatory agencies. “Under the Trump administration, when he says you’re an enemy, he’s going to make sure that everyone is retributive and vengeful towards you, and anything Paul Weiss wanted by way of relief from these regulators they would not get. It would have destroyed them even if they were purely a litigation firm.” …
There is little sign of pressure letting up. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sent letters to 20 large law firms, most of which were large corporate firms similar to Paul Weiss, asking them to describe their diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Lawyers at many of those firms say they are sympathetic to Karp’s decision and admit their firms could soon similarly bow to Trump in an effort to preserve their businesses.
“Most firm leaders would do exactly what Brad did,” says a chair from one of the country’s top law firms. “We — and I talk to everyone — are all incredibly grateful because it allows the industry, it gives us a blueprint, to resolve things in a constructive way.”
“No one is willing to go on the record because everyone’s concerned. I don’t want to pop my head up because you don’t know how it’s going to get smacked. But that’s very different from saying we don’t support what was done.”
Another corporate adviser is more blunt: “It was a mafia-like shakedown . . . There was no choice. Do you have a choice whether to pay the mob?”
Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block will test whether signing a deal with Trump is the right thing to do.
The temporary victory in court of the three firms “may give Paul Weiss a reason to reconsider its approach”, says Ryan Goodman, professor at the New York University School of Law. “That will be even more likely if their reputation emerges stronger for having put up this fight.”
As for Paul Weiss, even if its business model remains intact, there is still the risk it has irreparably sacrificed its singular moral authority among elite law firms. …
It’s early days yet, but initial indications are that Jenner & Block is telling Mango Mussolini, “Go pound sand. See you in court.”
That’s consistent with my intuition—for what it may be worth—that in going after Jenner & Block, Trump has picked the wrong bunch of hombres to mess around with.
Paul Weiss
The New York Times piece is, as the saying goes, deeply reported. In other words, as I would have expected, Paul Weiss is leaking like a sieve.
I don’t want to be a Monday morning quarterback. I don’t want to make this situation into a medieval morality play. I don’t want to make the Paul Weiss imbroglio a simple story about courage versus cowardice. That said, several points occur.
One, despite all the leaking and all the reporting, I doubt that we’ll ever know, I doubt that the Paul Weiss partnership at large will ever know, what all the key players—the firm’s biggest clients and its biggest movers and shakers—said to one another, to bring about Mr. Karp’s surrender.
Two, I think the Paul Weiss brand will never be the same. I think that nobody is going to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Three, I think the situation with the firm is very fluid. A giant law firm looks solid and powerful and invincible from the outside. Until, one day, maybe it isn’t.
A law firm’s assets consist of people. People have legs. They can walk out the door. When enough of them walk out the door, no more law firm. Ask Dewey & LeBoeuf. Ask Howrey LLP. Ask Thacher Proffitt & Wood. And many others.
Third, and closely related: the associates as well as the partners of Paul Weiss are highly skilled and highly employable. Every mother’s daughter and son of them could get an excellent job somewhere else. Tomorrow. They could be sitting at their new desks this coming Monday.
Fourth, while I’m not predicting the firm’s demise, I do think it will quickly become apparent that the firm has badly blotted its copybook and that its brand will never be the same.
Who wants to join a law firm that has the reputation for being a bunch of wimps?
If you have major legal exposure and need to hire someone to represent you, who wants to hire a law firm perceived to consist of a bunch of doormats?
Increasingly, it looks like Trump versus everyone else. It looks like Trump stands for kakistrocracy, corruption, and chaos.
It looks like a time for the legal community to ask, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?”
Professor Perlstein is a distinguished constitutional scholar and a professor at Princeton. Her analysis parallels mine in important respects.
I commend her full article to your attention; I won’t attempt to quote or paraphrase all of it. I also strongly commend to your attention Paul Weiss’s side of the story.
The Need for Collective Action
Prof. Perlstein writes,
[W]here many ordinary judges, law school deans and public interest attorneys of both political parties have found the courage to push back against Mr. Trump’s anti-constitutional histrionics, Big Law has largely stayed silent or worse.
These firms face a classic problem of collective action: Every individual firm has an incentive to keep quiet, but if everyone stays silent, all will lose. The problem is understandable. It is also solvable. It requires firms to find the courage to act together.
A Joint Amicus Brief Supporting Perkins Coie as a Means of Collective Action?
The idea has been much mooted, and a draft joint amicus brief has reportedly been prepared. But, on reflection, I’m strongly inclined to think that
Perkins Coie’s legal case is rock solid, and the other big law firms could tell the courts nothing—nothing—that the courts don’t already know, and that
a joint amicus brief would do nothing to change the odds of Perkins Coie wins or loses in the courts.
The latter question will come down to whether a majority of the Supreme Court choose to follow the law, or whether they choose to join the Trump ass kissers.
Professor Perlstein evidently agrees that the reasons for collective action are largely symbolic. She says,
[An] excuse circulating among Big Law lawyers is that speaking out won’t make a difference either way. Perkins Coie, after all, won its case without the broad support of its peer institutions.
That argument misses the point. Coming to Perkins Coie’s defense isn’t a decision about litigation strategy. It is about standing up to the administration’s intimidation. Signing on to joint briefs is not the only way to do that. Fellow firms and their clients could contribute to a joint defense fund, to help defray the costs of litigation and lost business for those on the receiving end of Mr. Trump’s score-settling wrath.
The point is for Big Law to do something — anything — as a group to demonstrate that they will continue to place their obligations to their clients and to the law above their fear of the bully. Solidarity can prove that point. And it can shore up the hope we all retain that the world’s strongest economy and oldest democracy will not both, simultaneously, fall.
The excuses made for Big Law’s silence are of course not limited to Big Law. The same collective action problem no doubt informs the discussions taking place inside the corner offices of the firms’ corporate clients, in the boardrooms of major media enterprises, at the gatherings of university trustees. The solutions to such problems are limited. But one tried and true approach remains clear: joining forces to fight back.
A Side Note on Law Firm Collective Action: The Bar Associations’ Statement
A joint statement by the New York City Bar Association and many other bar associations calls for rejecting “any efforts to use the tremendous power of the government against members of the legal profession for performing their duties.”
Note that the leadership of the New York City Bar Association includes many lawyers with leading law firms.
Collective Action? Yes, But Bring in the Business Roundtable and the United States Chamber of Commerce Along with the Top 200 Law Firms
Like many ideas, collective action is a wonderful idea, provided it works. I don’t think it will work unless and until the American business elite comes to its senses and realizes that Trump is, in truth, a tyrannical madman. You are not going to jollify him. You are not going to mollify him with minor bribes, like paying a few million dollars in bogus “settlements” of bogus lawsuits he has brought. He is, instead, a mortal danger to your businesses. And he is a mortal danger to you. Yes, you can bribe him on Monday. But he won’t stay bought. On Wednesday, you’ll have to do it all over again.
You have got to reach the point where you wake up and smell the coffee. Let the DOGE cuts wreak havoc on Trump voters. Let the tariffs wreak havoc on the economy. And then take collective action.
So, we’ve got a law firm with 200 partners, 1,000 associates, and annual revenue of $2.6 billion. We’ve got a president eager to violate every law on the books, to extort the law firm without mercy, and to bend it to his will. (Why? You may well ask. The answer is because the president is scared shitless that the courts are going to try to resist his tyrannical impulses—and he’s trying to frighten all the lawyers because he’s not sure he’ll succeed in frightening all the judges.)
You’ve got a law firm facing an existential threat to its existence. You’ve got a firm that tries to organize collective action to defend itself, but without success. You’ve got a firm that considers injunctive relief in the courts, thinks it could get that injunctive relief, but also thinks it would go belly up anyway.
In these circumstances, the head of the firm goes to meet Mango Mussolini, they talk for three hours or so, and they reach a deal.
And what, pray tell, were the terms of that deal? Well, on one side, President Mussolini abandoned his threat to squash Paul Weiss like a bug.
And what did Paul Weiss do in return? Find a slightly indirect way to share, maybe half a billion dollars with Orange Jesus?
No, as its consideration, Paul Weiss gave bupkis.
In the chairman’s telling,
First, we reiterated our commitment to viewpoint diversity, including in recruiting and in the intake of new matters. Second, while retaining our longstanding commitment to diversity in all of its forms, we agreed that we would follow the law with respect to our employment practices. And third, we agreed to commit $10 million per year over the next four years in pro bono time in three areas in which we are already doing significant work: assisting our Nation’s veterans, countering anti-Semitism, and promoting the fairness of the justice system.
Such a deal.
Such a deal.
What is Wrong with this Picture?
From one perspective, Paul Weiss made out like bandits. But what’s the problem? What is wrong this this picture?
I assume that what Trump really wanted—and what he certainly got—were a lot of headlines along the lines of “Great Big Bad Law Firm Bends Knee to Trump and Kisses His Fat Ass.”
And certainly, for a long, long time to come, Paul Weiss will be known as the first big law firm to knuckle under.
Remember that a key aspect of competition for a firm like Paul Weiss is competition to recruit able you associates—so that you can sell their time at retail for $1,000 or more per hour.
If there are any brilliant law grads yearning for careers as Trump’s towel boys, I am sure they will relish the golden opportunity to come work for Paul Weiss.
As to the brilliant law grads who still have some self-respect, not so much, or so I would think.
From:Karp, Brad S Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2025 2:51 PM To: GRP-ALL-WW Subject: Statement to the PW Community
Dear Members of the Paul, Weiss Community,
I wanted to take this opportunity to speak with all of you more fully about the events of recent days. I know that this has been a profoundly unsettling time for all of you. Information gaps have been filled with speculation, concern, and misinformation, and I wanted to take this opportunity to address your concerns directly. Thank you for taking the time to listen.
Late in the evening of Friday, March 14, the President issued an executive order targeting our firm. Since then, we have been facing an unprecedented threat to our firm unlike anything since Samuel Weiss first hung out a shingle in downtown Manhattan on April 1, 1875—almost exactly 150 years ago.
Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis. The 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. In particular, it threatened our clients with the loss of their government contracts, and the loss of access to the government, if they continued to use the firm as their lawyers. And in an obvious effort to target all of you as well as the firm, it raised the specter that the government would not hire our employees.
We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.
We initially prepared to challenge the executive order in court, and a team of Paul, Weiss attorneys prepared a lawsuit in the finest traditions of the firm. But it became clear that, even if we were successful in initially enjoining the executive order in litigation, it would not solve the fundamental problem, which was that clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the Administration. We could prevent the executive order from taking effect, but we couldn’t erase it. Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to. It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.
At the same time, we learned that the Administration might be willing to reach a resolution with us. So, working with our outside counsel, we did exactly what we advise our clients to do in “bet the company” litigation every day: we talked with the Administration to see if we could achieve a lasting settlement that would not require us to compromise our core values and fundamental principles.
In a matter of days, we were able to negotiate such a resolution. That resolution, the terms of which I shared with all of you on Thursday evening, had three primary components. First, we reiterated our commitment to viewpoint diversity, including in recruiting and in the intake of new matters. Second, while retaining our longstanding commitment to diversity in all of its forms, we agreed that we would follow the law with respect to our employment practices. And third, we agreed to commit $10 million per year over the next four years in pro bono time in three areas in which we are already doing significant work: assisting our Nation’s veterans, countering anti-Semitism, and promoting the fairness of the justice system.
To be clear, and to clarify misinformation perpetuated from various media sources, the Administration is not dictating what matters we take on, approving our matters, or anything like that. We obviously would not, and could not ethically, have agreed to that. Instead, we have agreed to commit substantial pro bono resources, in addition to the $130+ million we already commit annually, in areas of shared interest. We will continue all of the existing pro bono work we already do and will continue in our longstanding role as a leader of the private bar in the pro bono and public interest sphere.
This existential crisis required the leadership of our law firm to make incredibly difficult decisions under extraordinary time pressure. In making those decisions, we were guided by two fundamental principles. First and foremost, we were guided by our obligation to protect our clients’ interests. As I mentioned earlier, we concluded that even a victory in litigation would not be sufficient to do so, because our firm would still be perceived as persona non grata with the Administration. We simply could not practice law in the Paul, Weiss way if we were still subject to the executive order. This resolution was unambiguously in our clients’ best interests.
Equally important, we were guided by our fiduciary duty to all of you—by our obligation, as stewards of the firm, to protect the livelihoods of the 2,500 lawyers and non-legal professionals who work at Paul, Weiss. That consideration—the need to ensure, above all, that our firm would survive—weighed extremely heavily on all of us, and especially on me, as the leader of the firm.
In today’s political environment, it is unsurprising that the announcement that we have negotiated a resolution with the Administration, rather than fighting it in court, has generated intense feelings across the firm and indeed across the entire legal and broader community. As is often the case in situations like this, the extensive media coverage and social media commentary surrounding recent events has taken on a life of its own, with its own factual narrative and its own momentum. The coverage has been decidedly unhelpful, piecemeal, and incorrect in many fundamental respects. But it is not particularly constructive for any of us involved to debate factual discrepancies. Instead, what is most important is to look to the future. In this regard, I want to provide some clarity and perspective as we move forward.
First, and most important, we have quickly solved a seemingly intractable problem and removed a cloud of uncertainty that was hanging over our law firm. Our clients have been overwhelmingly supportive, expressing relief at the resolution of this situation and the fact that, as the President publicly has acknowledged, our firm now has an engaged and constructive relationship with this Administration. Thousands of clients have reached out directly to express their continued confidence in Paul, Weiss and their appreciation for our unwavering dedication to their matters throughout this period and our ability to quickly secure a resolution that will redound to their benefit. Even those who have expressed personal disappointment that we didn’t fight the Administration have said they fully appreciate what was at stake for our law firm and respect our decision.
Second, the resolution we reached with the Administration will have no effect on our work and our shared culture and values. The core of who we are and what we stand for is and will remain unchanged. To that end, we will continue our proud, century-long legacy of courageously standing up for fundamental rights and liberties, for fairness in the justice system, and for our society’s most vulnerable individuals. That commitment is woven into our DNA; it was and will never be subject to negotiation or compromise.
Third, we will continue to support each of you in your career journey, providing you with the world’s best training and opportunities to advance and thrive in your field. Above all, we will continue to be a place where we enjoy working together; where we respect each other; where we can practice law at the highest levels of excellence.
I know many of you are uncomfortable that we entered into any sort of resolution at all. That is completely understandable. There was no right answer to the predicament in which we found ourselves. All of us have opinions about what is going on right now in America. This is an incredibly consequential moment for our country. It is very easy for commentators to judge our actions from the sidelines. But no one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.
I want to close by expressing my profound gratitude to each of you. Since March 14, we have seen Paul, Weiss at its very best, supporting each other in the face of an unprecedented threat. You have demonstrated, once again, the extraordinary caliber of our Paul, Weiss community. Your professionalism, your dedication to our clients, your support for one another, and your commitment to our firm have been nothing short of remarkable under these impossibly challenging circumstances. I am confident that, just as we have in past crises, we will get through this together and become even stronger and more resilient as a community.
To that end, my door is open to you as we navigate next steps, as are the doors of firm leadership. This has been a deeply painful experience for me and for the other leaders of the firm. I know it has been a profoundly difficult period for many of you. Since March 14, we have been weathering a terrible storm. But I know that we will get through this storm, and that we will continue to uphold the proud traditions that have defined Paul, Weiss for the last 150 years. I am so thankful for each and every one of you, and for all that you do every day for this very special place and for our broader communities.
My daughter Pollyanna called this morning to cheer me up. She made some good points. Here are five of them.
First, collective action by Paul Weiss and other large corporate law firms is not necessary to save the rule of law, nor is it sufficient to save the rule of law in the United States.
Nor is it sufficient. Survival of the rule of law requires, first of all, resolute action by the federal judiciary generally and by at least five Supreme Court justices in particular, and then, secondly, widespread support on the public’s part for resistance to tyranny. That alone will suffice.
Second, to the extent that specialized legal learning about the constitutional case law is needed to defend the rule of law, the big law firms largely do not have that expertise. They know a lot about securities law, environmental law, tax law, antitrust law, and intellectual property law.
Constitutional law, not so much.
Third, while it’s regrettable that Paul Weiss temporized, that’s not at all surprising. That’s what generally happens when someone is faced with a new and unexpected situation, with strong incentives pulling in wildly different directions.
But, fourth, the situation remains fluid.
Paul Weiss and its peers are in the business of hiring junior lawyers with sterling credentials—Harvard Law Review and the like—paying them very large salaries, and parceling out their time, hour by hour, at $1,000 or more, for services rendered to gigantic corporations.
Apparently, a good portion of corporate America is still sleep walking, looking to the Trump administration for those sweet, sweet tax cuts and deregulatory policies, and still imagining that his talk about tariffs and invading Canada, etc., is all bullshit.
Paul Weiss as we know it cannot exist without a lot of corporate clients paying it $2.6 billion a year.
On the other hand, Paul Weiss as we know it cannot exist without a continuing supply of very able young lawyers. A lot of them are very upset indeed. And, I would bet good money, a fair number of the partners are not happy, either.
Fifth and finally, if you look closely at what Paul Weiss actually “agreed” to do, it looks like Trump did not get very much apart from headlines along the lines of “Big Law Firm Capitulates.”
The firm “agreed” to supply $40 million in legal services—not money, but the “value” of the legal services—to pro bono clients as mutually agreed between Trump and the firm. $40 million is 1/65 of the firm’s annual earnings. And the firm is “paying,” not in cash, but in services.
Back of the envelope calculation: If the contributed pro bono services are “worth” on average, say, $1300 per hour, then the $40 million figure works out to 30,769 hours per year. If Paul Weiss’s 1200 lawyers bill on average 2,000 hours/year to their paying clients—and that may be low—then, collectively, they’re billing 2.4 million hours. The promised Trump pro bono 30,769 hours represent 1/78 of the estimated total current billable hours.
Chicken feed.
The firm also “agreed” not to turn away business based on the prospective client’s political affiliation. Fine. They probably shouldn’t do that anyway.
And the firm seems to have discussed with Trump having some sort of a look-see about its employment practices.
In short, the firm’s “obligations” seem trivial, ambiguous, and, to a significant degree, illusory. I’ll bet Mr. Karp of Paul Weiss walked out of his meeting last week with Trump thinking that he had just yanked the wool over Orange Mussolini’s eyes, good and proper.
This week, though, things probably look more complicated.
President Trump took a broad swing at the [legal] industry Friday night after three earlier orders punishing Paul Weiss and two other firms. In a presidential memorandum, he broadly accused law firms of abusing the legal system to challenge his policies, stymie immigration enforcement and pursue partisan causes. He instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek sanctions in court against lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation.”
Trump also directed Bondi to launch a broad review of conduct by lawyers in litigation against the government over the last eight years to determine whether additional firms should face the same type of punishments he has issued already, most notably the termination of government contracts held by firm clients.
Administration officials already have built a list of more than a dozen law firms they might target with executive orders, and Trump has expressed eagerness in signing more of them, according to people familiar with the planning.
Trump’s latest pronouncement landed particularly hard in an industry that was still processing Paul Weiss’s decision to cut a deal with the White House rather than challenge the administration in court. Trump on Thursday rescinded his order against the firm after it agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services to support the administration’s initiatives, such as assisting veterans and fighting antisemitism.
Several law-firm chairs and senior partners said they were working to calm clients and employees, with younger associates increasingly calling for lawyers to take a stand against Trump. Some firm leaders said their clients—and their fellow partners—were split on whether they would rather their firms take a deal if targeted or fight it out in court. A number of firms were trying to draw distinctions to clients between their work and the activities of the firms that Trump has punished already. Corporate lawyers with a connection to the Trump administration have been tapped to open communication lines with the White House, and several firms were seeking to engage lobbyists, people familiar with the discussions said.
Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp spoke with other firms’ leaders in recent days and told them he found the deal with the White House distasteful but said he had little choice but to take it, according to people familiar with those conversations.
“Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to,” Karp told firm lawyers and employees in an internal email Sunday viewed by the Journal. “It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”
One firm, Perkins Coie, which was hit with a Trump executive order on March 6, continued to lead the fight against the administration over the weekend.
“Now more than ever law firms and lawyers across the political spectrum have to stand up for our timeless values,” David Perez, a Perkins Coie partner said on LinkedIn. The Paul Weiss agreement, he said, emboldened Trump “to ratchet up his attack on one of the strongest checks on his power: lawyers and the rule of law.”
Perkins Coie sued the administration on March 11 and won a restraining order against the administration, with a judge saying the executive order was likely unconstitutional. But while the firm is winning in court, it is struggling to manage the fallout behind the scenes.
Perkins is losing clients who fear Trump’s wrath, and a number of top companies that work with the firm have called other firms about representation, people familiar with the matter said. One of the people said some competing lawyers have made sympathetic calls to Perkins to say they aren’t trying to steal the firm’s clients and would step aside if those clients wanted to return to Perkins after the situation calmed down.
An effort across a number of firms to file a court brief in support of Perkins continues to flounder because not enough firms are willing to sign it, for fear of antagonizing the administration, people familiar with those negotiations said.
San Francisco-based Keker, Van Nest & Peters urged law firm leaders “to resist the administration’s erosion of the rule of law.”
“Our liberties depend on lawyers’ willingness to represent unpopular people and causes, including in matters adverse to the federal government,” the firm said. “An attack on lawyers who perform this work is inexcusable and despicable.”
Trump’s campaign in part has been focused on paying back opponents. Perkins, for example, worked with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and an opposition-research firm that compiled a discredited dossier against Trump. Covington & Burling, another firm hit with an executive order, provided legal counsel to former special counsel Jack Smith. And Trump cited Paul Weiss’s previous ties to Mark Pomerantz, who also worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump and his business.
But the president’s Friday memorandum also signaled Trump’s broader frustrations with lawyers challenging his initiatives in court—and winning. His administration is currently locked in a showdown with a Washington federal judge over Trump’s invocation of wartime powers to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. A number of the president’s other initiatives have been put on hold by the courts, including the termination of thousands of government employees and limits on birthright citizenship and transgender rights.
Public-interest legal organizations and smaller firms have been leading many of those cases.
Sid Davidoff, a New York lawyer who was famously on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” said industry leaders were caving to pressure.
“You have some top notch firms, significant legal minds, and they’re just being whipped,” Davidoff said. “I guess they are trying to protect their bottom line, but it’s really upsetting.”
With the United States Congress having debased and shamed itself in the face of Trump’s bullying, it’s especially important for other institutions to stand up to the nonsense. Especially the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Especially the colleges and universities, and particularly the elite universities. Especially the legal profession, and particularly the American Bar Association and the elite law firms.
As to Covington, as far as I can tell, the matter is hanging fire.
In the case of Paul Weiss, the firm retained as its counsel a Trump-linked law firm and then, shortly thereafter, Paul Weiss’s head had a face-to-face meeting with Mango Mussolini—a meeting that is said to have resulted in a settlement agreement. The latter has been represented, at least by headline writers, as a capitulation by the targeted law firm.
I really don’t think so.
Trump-Approved Pro Bono Work
The purported agreement is described in Mr. Schmidt’s article, cited above. One component is said to entail the firm’s contributing “$40 million in legal services to causes Mr. Trump has championed, including ‘the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects,” according to Schmidt’s reporting.
Paul Weiss’s annual revenue is about $2.6 billion, and its profit per partner stands at just over $7.5 million. Even if the agreement implied that the firm would forego $40 million in revenues, that would only be a microscopic part of the firm’s annual earnings.
Paul Weiss is currently charging $1,000 per hour for second-year associates, $1,560 per hour for senior associates, and up to $2,400 per hour for partner time. Depending on which lawyers at Paul Weiss are going to provide the Trump-approved pro bono legal services, it’s not going to take all that long to eat up $40 million.
DEI
Schmidt also reports, “The firm, Mr. Trump said, also agreed to conduct an audit to ensure its hiring practices are merit based ‘and will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.’”
Facing MAGA 