Trump, Paul Weiss, and the capitulation of Big Law: 5 takeaways

When law firm Paul Weiss reached a deal with the White House last year to resolve an executive order that threatened it with crippling sanctions, the legal and political worlds were stunned.

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The firm had long been known for standing up to the government and championing progressive causes going back to the Civil Rights Movement. During the first Trump administration, Brad Karp, then chair, had fought the president in court on issues like separating migrant children from their parents. Partners at the firm had hosted a fund-raiser for President Joe Biden and helped Vice President Kamala Harris with her debate prep.

So, when Karp quickly surrendered to the White House and made a deal to resolve an executive order widely seen as illegal, it seemed like a dramatic pivot. It was also consequential, foreshadowing how an array of institutions would bend to President Trump. Though four firms fought similar executive orders, eight others followed Paul Weiss’s example and cut deals, agreeing to perform a total of nearly $1 billion in free legal work for causes Trump supported.

The New York Times spent months trying to understand what had happened within the storied institution — conducting interviews, reviewing court records, and obtaining internal emails and other documents. Here are five takeaways from the Times’ investigation.

The surrender was years in the making — and partly driven by profits.

Long before the executive order, a struggle within Paul Weiss pitted its stable of elite litigators against a rising crop of corporate lawyers singularly focused on the bottom line.

As the corporate lawyers rode a wave of private equity growth and raked in more and more profits, their influence grew. They pushed against the pro bono civil rights litigation that had been at the center of Paul Weiss’s culture.

So when Trump took aim at Paul Weiss, partly because of its activist history, a long-simmering identity crisis morphed into an existential one.

The shift from idealism to money accelerated with a bold new hire.

Looking to amp up Paul Weiss’s corporate practice, Karp made what would turn out to be a fateful decision. In 2016, he hired Scott Barshay, a bona fide rainmaker from a rival firm who had a dizzying record of generating lucrative legal work.

Barshay helped the rich firm become even richer. But that came at a cost. Behind the scenes, he was at times abrasive and led the effort to clamp down on social justice litigation, arguing it was bad for business because it could alienate clients.

In private meetings with the firm’s top leadership, Barshay also pushed to hire more aggressive lawyers, not soft, idealistic ones interested in social justice cases.

The firm’s treatment of a transgender lawyer showed how much it had changed.

Barshay took aim at a rising star, Lex Korberg, Paul Weiss’s first openly transgender partner.

Korberg, who uses they/them pronouns, decided to leave Paul Weiss after Barshay pushed against their social justice work. What Korberg didn’t know was that Barshay had privately told other firm leaders that after they transitioned in 2021, he no longer wanted them dealing with his clients, arguing that a transgender lawyer could hurt business by making people uncomfortable.

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To insulate the firm, Paul Weiss struck a secret $3.5 million deal in 2023, never previously revealed, under which Korberg agreed not to sue or disparage the firm.

A Paul Weiss spokesperson, Laura Van Drie, said that Korberg had been “a highly valued partner” and that Barshay had been “happy” for Korberg “to work for his clients.”

Top leaders supported the Trump deal.

Among the leadership of Paul Weiss, there was broad support to resolve the executive order. Even Karen Dunn, a top partner who had helped the Harris campaign, pushed to finalize the deal.

“Let’s get this done!!!!” Dunn wrote to Karp and other leaders in an email reviewed by the Times.

Karp presented the framework of the deal at a March meeting of the firm’s partners. He said that Paul Weiss would perform $40 million in free legal work for causes that both Trump and the firm championed.

The text of the agreement, reviewed by the Times, also said that the firm would show no political favoritism in choosing clients, that its pro bono work would represent “the full spectrum of political viewpoints,” and that it would hire “experts” agreed upon with the administration to review the firm’s hiring practices.

Still, Karp assured partners that the agreement would not affect the firm’s integrity.

The deal undermined the firm’s independence.

In the days after the deal, as the storm of public criticism grew, Dunn pushed top leaders to bring a case against the administration that would telegraph Paul Weiss’s continued independence. She had been searching for a potential client, including speaking with an abortion-rights group about a lawsuit. But Barshay and Karp objected, unwilling to risk invoking Trump’s rage again. Paul Weiss never brought the case.

The firm looked to appease the Trump administration in other ways, too. It cleansed its website for the Center to Combat Hate of any references to its lawsuits against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their role in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

Van Drie said that “any assertion that our independence has been jeopardized is completely false.” She said that Paul Weiss’s pro bono work had continued to increase but did not provide any examples of work it had done opposing the second Trump administration.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.