What if the Big Law Firms Hadn’t Caved to Trump?
The story of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, one of the world’s leading law firms, stands out. It employs twelve hundred and fifty attorneys in offices throughout the world and generates annual revenue of $2.63 billion, generating annual profits of more than $7.5 million per associate. The firm is home to some of the most accomplished lawyers in the United States and has a widely feared litigation practice. He also has a venerable history of civil rights work, including assisting Thurgood Marshall in desegregation cases in the 1950s and representing plaintiff Edith Windsor in the landmark 2013 Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor, which struck down as unconstitutional a federal law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Trump resented Paul and Weiss for several reasons. Jeannie Rhee, who was then a partner at the firm, had worked for Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who investigated possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, and, after the events of January 6, she took on a pro bono case against some of the rioters; Mark Pomerantz, a former associate, helped sue Trump in New York courts for falsifying business records; and Trump was angered by the employment practices of the DEI company. On March 14, he issued an executive order citing these alleged sins and ordering federal agencies to review all security clearances previously granted to Paul Weiss’ lawyers, restrict their access to federal buildings, and possibly terminate government contracts with the firm. Around the same time, Trump issued executive orders against various other firms because he didn’t like the lawyers who worked for them or the clients they represented, or both. The executive order against the law firm Perkins Coie LLP, for example, cited its representation of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
The consequences of these orders could be devastating for a company like Paul Weiss. If its attorneys could not enter federal buildings or courthouses, representing clients in federal courts and agencies would become impossible. The firm’s work with multinational companies seeking licenses and permits before government agencies (like energy companies seeking development permits or investment firms negotiating with the Securities and Exchange Commission), or even litigating in federal court, could evaporate.
But the government’s efforts to punish speakers and speech it disfavors are patently unconstitutional. Any attempt to prevent private attorneys from representing clients of their choosing is an attack on those attorneys’ fundamental right to practice law and a flagrant violation of their and their firm’s First Amendment rights. And going after corporations because the administration has a grudge against a specific lawyer who works there is unprecedented and represents a gross weaponization of executive power. This is not a narrow constitutional issue.
The president of Paul Weiss is Brad Karp, who assumed this role at the relatively young age of forty-eight. He has been described as one of the country’s top trial lawyers, representing some of the world’s largest financial companies in lawsuits worth billions of dollars. And Karp is not unaware of the risks posed by threats to the rule of law: he served on the board of directors of the World Law Foundation, a nonprofit organization of more than eight thousand American and international lawyers dedicated to “promoting the rule of law as the guarantor of freedom and peace, and strengthening democracy and its institutions throughout the world.” The foundation holds biannual conferences, with panels dedicated to discussing recent threats to the rule of law and presenting awards to lawyers who defend it. Past winners include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Andrew Young and Nelson Mandela. (I spoke on panels at the 2023 and 2025 conventions on issues related to press freedoms.)
But, instead of defending the rule of law and suing the administration for its illegal executive order, Karp and Paul, Weiss simply settled a simple dispute. six days after Trump posted it. This settlement required the company to provide forty million dollars in pro bono services to “support the Administration’s initiatives” and to “not adopt, use, or continue any DEI policy.” Eight other global law firms quickly followed suit, reaching settlements totaling nearly $1 billion in pro bono services for causes championed by the administration. And, although all companies claim to have retained control over the specific pro bono work they will perform, Trump clearly doesn’t see it that way, suggesting during a Cabinet meeting that he might use legal work as a sort of personal piggy bank of services even after leaving office, saying, of the accumulated total, “I hope I won’t need it,” he said, “after it’s over, after, after we’re gone. Maybe I will need.”
