The powerful white shoe law firm Paul Weiss is facing a firestorm of criticism after striking a deal with the Trump administration, which revoked a crushing executive order targeting the firm in exchange for pro bono legal services and other internal changes.
More than 140 former employees signed onto a March 24 letter to the firm’s chair, Brad Karp, lambasting its “craven surrender” to the administration’s “bullying tactics.”
“Instead of a ringing defense of the values of democracy, we witnessed a craven surrender to, and thus complicity in, what is perhaps the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy,” the letter states.
The names on the letter include influential professors Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania, Helen Hershkoff of New York University and Edward Purcell of New York Law School, and Ilene Jaroslaw, a partner at Elliott Kwok who spent more than two decades as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Several individuals signed the letter anonymously, however, as the broader legal community has refrained from public critiques that could put them in the crosshairs of the White House.
President Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss in March 14 executive order that would have revoked critical security clearances for the firm’s personnel and limited access to federal buildings, which Karp called an “existential crisis” in a firm-wide letter Sunday published by Original Jurisdiction.
There’s not much debate that the administration’s attacks on entities including Paul Weiss was a serious threat. But the implications of conceding to the White House — Karp committed the firm to $40 million in pro bono work in support of Trump’s agenda — are far reaching, those in the legal world say.
“The analogy is not far from a mob boss coming to a business and saying, ‘Hey, pay me some protection money or your business is out of business,’” Eric Orts, a professor at the The Wharton School at the University Pennsylvania and former associate attorney at Paul Weiss, told NOTUS. “Once you pay that person, what happens next time? Do you think the person goes away and never comes back again?”
Orts did not sign the open letter, though he expressed disappointment that law firms have not banded together in the face of the Trump administration’s attacks.
“If you are able to cow the biggest players or the strongest players, then when you come to somebody weaker, a lot of other people are going to fold and kowtow as well,” Orts said.
Karp also called out other firms for ignoring their pleas for public support.
“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,” Karp wrote, arguing the firm has a duty to protect its clients and employees.
“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,” Karp said.
Trump has issued similar executive orders aimed at other law firms including the legal giant Covington & Burling. One of those firms, Perkins Coie, fought back.
Perkins Coie sued the Trump administration earlier this month, saying the firm “cannot allow its clients to be bullied,” and secured a temporary restraining order. The Trump administration filed a motion Friday demanding the judge recuse herself from the case, arguing she has “repeatedly demonstrated partiality against and animus towards the president.”
The Perkins Coie case could have wide-reaching implications for the independence of law firms that take on work and clients the president does not like. In the executive orders, Trump cited Perkins Coie’s work with Democratic mega-donor George Soros, a frequent target of right-wing attacks and conspiracy theories, and Paul Weiss’s decision to hire a partner who had worked with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in Trump’s hush money trial.
“You have the president telling law firms how to run their business, what clients to have, whether they can give the one cause or another cause. That’s disastrous,” Orts said.
Neither the White House nor Paul Weiss responded to requests for comment.
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Taylor Giorno is a reporter at NOTUS.