Brad Karp defends deal with US president as Skadden junior lawyer resigns in protest over D&I attack
The chair of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) has defended the firm’s controversial agreement with US President Donald Trump, telling colleagues that the elite New York outfit was facing “an existential crisis” that could have led to its collapse.
In an internal email to colleagues sent on Sunday, Brad Karp said Trump’s executive order, which suspended Paul Weiss’ security clearances and barred the firm from federal buildings, “brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people and our clients”.
“Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis,” Karp wrote. “The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm.”
Once home to Mark Pomerantz, the prosecutor who previously investigated Trump’s finances, the firm agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services and disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in hiring decisions.
Karp said Paul Weiss had initially prepared to fight the order in court, but opted to negotiate after it became clear the firm was already losing business. “Without the deal, it was very likely we would not have been able to survive a drawn-out dispute,” he said, adding that rival firms had already begun approaching Paul, Weiss clients in the wake of the order.
While the White House celebrated the agreement as a “remarkable change of course”, Karp pushed back against claims that the administration was now dictating the firm’s pro bono docket. The agreed matters, he insisted, were “areas of shared interest”.
Karp, who was a known fundraiser for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, said his actions were guided by fiduciary duty. “There was no right answer to the predicament in which we found ourselves,” he told staff. “But no one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.”
The fallout from the Trump administration’s crackdown on the legal industry is being felt across the profession. One of the authors of an open letter signed by thousands of junior lawyers denouncing the administration’s “intimidation tactics” has now resigned from her job at Skadden.
Rachel Cohen, the associate who coordinated the letter, posted on LinkedIn: “I’ve spent thirty years working to get into these spaces. I do not give them up lightly, and I have made plenty of moral compromises before. But this moment is existential.”
She continued: “If being on this career path demands I accept that my industry — because this is certainly not unique to Skadden — will allow an authoritarian government to ignore the courts, I refuse to take it any further.”
Cohen described submitting a conditional resignation firm-wide, anticipating the news would leak. She concluded, “I’m going to go cry and watch the new White Lotus, but rest assured I will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.”
A dozen more law firms are expected to be targeted in new executive orders, according to a White House official. Perkins Coie continues to challenge its order in court, while other firms including Covington & Burling have reportedly been placed under review.
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