Paul Weiss Law Firm Strikes Deal To Avoid Retribution From Trump

The law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss) is facing blowback from the legal community after agreeing to provide $40 million in pro bono representation to the Trump administration in order to avoid being punished by the president for representing his political rivals and defending laws and principles he disagrees with. 

Earlier this month, Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting major American and global law firms he accused of engaging in “activities that make our communities less safe, increase burdens on local businesses, limit constitutional freedoms, and degrade the quality of American elections.” The president claimed that Paul Weiss had violated civil rights law by engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion-based hiring practices. Trump also complained that the firm had previously employed Mark Pomerantz, a former special assistant district attorney in New York who urged Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to pursue an indictment against Trump in 2022. Pomerantz has since become a target of MAGA Republicans retribution agenda against Trump’s perceived political enemies. 

The executive order — which like many of Trump’s presidential edicts is of dubious legality — would have stripped all “security clearances held by individuals at Paul Weiss and Mark Pomerantz,” revoked all federal contracts involving the law firm, and barred employees of the firm from accessing federal buildings. 

On Thursday, the president announced that he had rescinded the order after meeting with Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp. In a lengthy statement posted on Truth Social, Trump wrote that the firm had committed to “not deny representation to clients, including in pro bono matters and in support of non-profits, because of the personal political views of individual lawyers.” 

Trump wrote that Paul Weiss also agreed to dismantle any diversity related initiatives and would “dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.” 

The president included a statement from Brad Karp, who said: “We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration.”

Attorneys who formerly worked at Paul Weiss are livid. “It is beyond disappointing to see Paul Weiss cower at Trump’s executive order,” one former attorney, who chose to remain anonymous, told Rolling Stone.  “Their humiliating response emboldens the administration to keep targeting political enemies and embarrasses every Paul Weiss lawyer who believed the firm was willing to go toe to toe with giants. Instead, they showed everyone that one of the great legal heavyweights had a glass jaw all along.” 

Another attorney who no longer works at the firm said that “as lawyers, we have a responsibility to uphold the rule of law. Paul Weiss — a firm with extraordinary resources, talent, and power — capitulated to an authoritarian show of force rather than challenge the executive order in court.”

 “It’s a betrayal of the work they’ve done in the past to confront Trump, a betrayal of other firms targeted by similar orders, and a betrayal of the legal profession,” they added. 

Hours after Trump made the announcement, Rachel Cohen, an associate at the Skadden Arps legal firm, resigned in a blistering company-wide email condemning the capitulation. “Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment,” she wrote.

Earlier this week, Cohen authored an open letter signed by over 300 associates at major law firms calling on them to “defend their colleagues and the legal profession by condemning this rapid purge of ‘partisan actors,’ a group that seems to be synonymous with those the president feels have wronged him.”

In her conditional resignation email, Cohen called on Skadden to sign an amicus brief supporting Perkins Coie — another law firm targeted by their administration — in their efforts to block the enforcement of the executive orders, committing to “broad future representation, regardless of whether powerful people view it as adverse to them,” and a “public refusal to fire or otherwise force out employees at the Trump administration’s directive or implied directive.” 

Paul Weiss’s deal with the administration reflects a larger pattern of major industry leaders folding when threatened by the president. Much like a mafia boss running a protection racket, the best defense against the Trump administration is to pay tribute upfront. It’s obvious in the Silicon Valley giants who lined up for dinners at Mar-a-Lago after the election, and dumped millions into the president’s inaugural fund, and in how ABC News agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit many believed they would have won. 

On Monday, while discussing his tariff policy in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that “people are coming to me and talking about tariffs — and a lot of people are asking me if they could have exceptions.”

The president has indeed granted exceptions. One could argue that, more often than not, he is selling them.