A week and a half ago, Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances and business with the government, as well as potentially barring their lawyers from Federal courthouses.
In addition, Trump implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients.
It’s a blatantly illegal order, the kind widely understood as an authoritarian move .
It followed on Trump targeting two other big law firms,
Covington and Burling and Perkins Coie, whose partners had engaged in partisan activity against the Republicans.
Threatening lawyers who represent clients opposed to the government is tin pot dictator stuff, meant to chill any opposition.
So you would think that a politically wired firm would recognize that they have an ethical obligation, or even just a branding one, to oppose it.
Indeed, a high profile case like this is in some ways a lawyer’s dream,
it’s so obviously morally repugnant and a sure loser, or winner potentially for Paul Weiss.
Moreover, you would think that the rest of the big law world would rally behind these firms, seeing that any one of them could be next.
And indeed, Perkins Coie fought the order in court, quickly winning a temporary stay, with the judge saying this order “sends chills down my spine.”
But in the case of Paul Weiss, that’s not what happened.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Competitors immediately began circling after the March 14 order, calling coveted Paul Weiss clients to note that
the firm had been marked as an enemy of the president, according to people familiar with the conversations.”
Within a few days, Brad Karp, the firm’s Chairman, sought to cut a deal with the Trump administration.
Paul Weiss hired Bill Burck, the lawyer for indicted New York City mayor Eric Adams.
Working through Burck, as well as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a firm client, Karp reached out to Trump, and they met for three hours.
In the middle of that meeting with Karp, Trump picked up the phone and calling Paul Weiss’s most important rival, Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell, and asked what he should do.
The whole episode leaked, which revealed to the entire corporate and legal world that Paul Weiss has no juice in Trump-world, and Sullivan & Cromwell does.
Finally, they cut a deal.
In return for Trump ending his executive order, the firm agreed to end its diversity programs,
do $40 million of free work for Trump-aligned priorities,
and ensure that it would hire and represent Trump-aligned clients.
Karp also disavowed former Paul Weiss lawyer Mark Pomerantz,
who had worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in a case against Trump.
This capitulation shocked and horrified the legal world,
inviting Trump to expand his attack on the legal community.
The next day, Trump issued another executive order calling for the government to sanction lawyers who bring “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” lawsuits against the government.
That’s a signal to the entire legal world that representing clients in disagreements with the government carries a personal and professional risk.
