In 2018, Brad Karp, chairman of the regulation agency Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and Gary Wingens, chairman of Lowenstein Sandler, denounced President Donald Trump’s immigration insurance policies of household separation and detention as “illegal and immoral” in a New York Times op-ed. That coverage of Trump’s first time period, Karp and Wingens promised, could be countered by an “military of attorneys,” led by their corporations, preventing on behalf of “the poor and the susceptible towards focused governmental abuses.”
“The world is watching, and the personal bar is mobilizing to serve the 1000’s who’ve been imperiled by the Trump administration — and to make sure that the rule of regulation is protected as effectively,” Karp wrote.
For his and his agency’s efforts preventing for immigrant rights, reproductive rights and gun management, Karp was named legal professional of the 12 months by New York Legislation Journal in 2018. As of March 2024, nevertheless, the press launch touting this achievement is now nowhere to be discovered on Paul Weiss’ web site. The identical goes for a press launch selling a New York Times article from 2018 about Paul Weiss’ work preventing the primary Trump administration’s immigration coverage.
These are simply two examples of dozens of press releases and pages touting the agency’s professional bono work on immigration, reproductive rights, countering right-wing extremists and voting rights which have disappeared from the agency’s website online within the weeks since Trump first issued an executive order seeking to destroy the nearly 150-year old firm.
Paul Weiss realized that the authorized group wouldn’t circle the wagons to guard their very own. As a substitute of becoming a member of collectively in help, different large regulation corporations circled like vultures, attempting to poach the firm’s clients and lawyers. So, Paul Weiss determined to strike a deal.
On March 21, Trump rescinded the manager order after the agency dedicated to aligning its range insurance policies with the administration and offering $40 million in professional bono providers to the “mutually agreed upon” priorities with the administration.
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The deal despatched shockwaves by way of the authorized group, together with amongst ex-Paul Weiss attorneys and workers. It appeared as if the agency, lengthy identified for its dedication to range and progressive causes, had bent the knee. The choice to capitulate now each undermines the agency’s skill to counter the administration’s extra and probably takes away a big group of expert attorneys from the professional bono work that smaller nonprofits depend on to combat again towards authorities abuses of rights.
“It’s actually gutting and it goes to the core of what we thought this agency was,” mentioned Elizabeth Grossman, a former Paul Weiss affiliate who now serves as president of the Illinois chapter of watchdog group Frequent Trigger.
In response to the agency’s cope with Trump, Grossman led a public letter to Karp from greater than 140 former Paul Weiss associates and staffers decrying the deal. That letter referred to as the deal “a everlasting stain on the face of an excellent agency that sought to achieve a revenue by forfeiting its soul.” Paul Weiss didn’t reply to a request for remark.
“It actually despatched a shockwave down my backbone to know that an entity that had the ability to face as much as the manager and for the rule of regulation merely declined to take action,” mentioned Nora Ahmed, a letter signatory who labored as a litigation legal professional at Paul Weiss from 2012-2014 and 2015-2020 and is now authorized director for the Louisiana chapter of the ACLU.
“Calling out injustice out loud is completely different than whispering it behind closed doorways.”
– Erin Elmouji, former Paul Weiss lawyer
The agency’s “soul,” in response to these former Paul Weiss attorneys, resides in its professional bono work in help of progressive causes, exemplified by its opposition to the primary Trump administration’s insurance policies. The deal “may have no impact on our work and our shared tradition and values” and the agency will proceed its professional bono work, Karp insisted in an internal email to staff. However, former agency attorneys consider which you could’t have it each methods.
“You’d must be kidding your self to suppose the agency can take an overtly hostile place to a authorities overreach in the best way that they did through the first administration,” mentioned Erin Elmouji, a former Paul Weiss lawyer from 2012-2018 who signed the letter to Karp. “This has signaled that they may capitulate once more. They may appease the federal government if they should.”
It’s an existential query not only for the agency itself, however for all of the nonprofits that depend on their professional bono providers in difficult administration insurance policies.
“Having Paul Weiss bend the knee like that is going to create a ripple impact, and an increasing number of corporations, in the event that they comply with go well with, then these nonprofits which might be the final protection towards authorities overreach have fewer and fewer private-sector corporations to name on to assist marshal this large influence litigation,” Elmouji mentioned.
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Paul Weiss isn’t alone amongst regulation corporations focused by Trump for punishment. Different Trump govt orders focused Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie and, on Tuesday, Jenner & Block. However how the corporations have responded have diverse. To this point, solely Perkins Coie has challenged these orders in courtroom, successful a brief restraining order from a federal district courtroom choose who mentioned the order “sent chills down my spine.” Neither Covington & Burling nor Jenner & Block have indicated but whether or not they may be a part of Perkins Coie’s lawsuit.
Even past a willingness by some corporations to capitulate, the dearth of unified opposition within the white-shoe authorized group is prone to have a major influence on how the nonprofits that need to deliver authorized challenges are in a position to function.
“Loads of these organizations are going to need to accomplice with different regulation corporations,” Grossman mentioned. “Even when Paul Weiss was in a position to work with them, they’re going to say, ‘I can’t work with a agency with these type of compromised values.’”
As a part of its professional bono work, Paul Weiss has labored alongside such large nonprofit advocacy teams as Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Heart for Reproductive Rights, Frequent Trigger, Brennan Heart for Justice, Attorneys’ Committee on Civil Rights and Heart for Constitutional Rights in addition to smaller immigrant rights teams like Make the Street NY, Children in Want of Protection, Girls’s Refugee Fee, The Door and Justice in Movement, amongst many others.
In an indication of how fraught the present scenario is, simply two of those dozen teams responded to a request for touch upon whether or not they have considerations in regards to the deal Paul Weiss made with the Trump administration. The Heart for Reproductive Rights declined to remark, however did present the group’s statement opposing Trump’s assaults on the authorized career. Frequent Trigger was the one one to offer an announcement particularly addressing Paul Weiss.
“We hope that Paul Weiss will recommit to supporting organizations like ours however it’s onerous to belief that they wouldn’t stroll away from us if the President didn’t like what they had been doing,” Frequent Trigger President Virginia Kase Solomón mentioned in an announcement. “There are lots of gifted attorneys at Paul Weiss who need to do that work and the higher query we consider is do they need to work for a agency that can acquiesce to an authoritarian.”
To this point, Paul Weiss attorneys stay concerned within the professional bono work they had been beforehand engaged on. Ahmed was joined by a Paul Weiss legal professional when she attended Supreme Court docket arguments on Monday within the racial discrimination redistricting case of Louisiana v. Callais.
“The celebration line is essentially that nothing has modified when it comes to the power to work with them going ahead,” Ahmed mentioned.
The most important downside, nevertheless, in response to former Paul Weiss attorneys, is that regardless that Karp mentioned in his inner email to workers that the agency had put the risk from the administration behind it, Trump can all the time change the phrases of any deal if he thinks the opposite celebration isn’t dwelling as much as his expectations.
“They’re considerably hostage now or there’s an look of being a hostage,” mentioned Jonathan Siegfried, who was a lawyer at Paul Weiss from 1975-1981 and signed Grossman’s letter.
Any future break with the administration may lead Trump to reimpose what Karp referred to as “a disaster” and threaten the agency once more.
Francis Chung/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos
That’s evidenced by the deletions throughout the agency’s web site. Along with the elimination of dozens of press releases touting the agency’s work on immigration, voting rights and different points, the agency’s professional bono touchdown web page now not lists its areas of labor, together with these beforehand titled Defending Immigrants & Households, Reproductive Justice and Supporting Households, LGBTQ+, Defending the Proper to Vote and Combatting Hate. The web site for the agency’s Heart to Fight Hate, which was solely launched in March 2024 and litigated instances towards the Proud Boys and white supremacists, now not exists. Hyperlinks to it on the agency’s web site have disappeared.
The agency could effectively nonetheless tackle professional bono instances in help of immigrant rights or different points, Siegfried mentioned, however, “there’s a distinction between doing them proudly as a result of they’re the suitable factor to do and being very quiet and silent about them.”
“Calling out injustice out loud is completely different than whispering it behind closed doorways,” Elmouji added.
The web site deletions spoke on to the largest shock and disappointment that the previous Paul Weiss attorneys felt after they heard the information in regards to the deal.
“We might have thought that Paul Weiss would have been within the forefront of not pulling these pages down and as an alternative talking out and rallying corporations to offer this illustration that’s wanted now greater than ever,” Siegfried mentioned.
The failure to take action promotes what Elmouji calls “trickle-down cowardice.” Paul Weiss had the fame and cash to face as much as the administration the place smaller corporations and the nonprofits who rent their attorneys for professional bono work don’t. By bowing to Trump and by censoring their web site, the agency has set an instance and a precedent that trickles all the way down to these much less in a position to combat again.
“We’re already seeing quite a lot of nonprofits and organizations taking these steps to wash their web sites whereas nonetheless professing to do the work, however we’re simply going to cover it or we’re going to take the phrases down,” Elmouji mentioned. “I feel it’s unsuitable when anyone does it, however I feel it’s notably unsuitable when attorneys do it.”
Siegfried puzzled what Ted Sorensen, the previous Paul Weiss lawyer, aide to John F. Kennedy and ghostwriter of Kennedy’s well-known Profiles in Braveness who died in 2010, would take into consideration the agency’s stunning “give up,” as Siegfried referred to as it, if he had been round.
“Standing up when the stakes are very excessive — when the stakes are personally excessive. That’s what a profile in braveness is,” Siegfried mentioned. “And that’s what, to me, stays the nice disappointment.”
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For Ahmed, the ache she feels from Paul Weiss’ capitulation is deeply private.
“The factor that makes me so unhappy is Paul Weiss made me the lawyer that I’m in the present day,” Ahmed mentioned. “The unhappiness comes from the truth that I do know there are unbelievable folks at that agency who I think about nonetheless in the present day consider so strongly within the civil rights and civil liberties of the folks in our nation, together with immigrants, and I don’t need that to get misplaced.”
