President Trump’s executive order attacking Paul Weiss and severely restricting that law firm’s ability to represent its clients was widely seen by lawyers as a dangerous affront to the nation’s legal system.
To rivals of Paul Weiss, it was an opportunity.
Within days of Mr. Trump’s March 14 order, some of the biggest competitors were calling top lawyers at the beleaguered law firm — one of the nation’s most prestigious — asking if they wanted to jump ship along with their lucrative clients.
Several firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell and Kirkland & Ellis, were looking to exploit the moment, according to five lawyers with direct knowledge of the poaching. All the lawyers interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk about discussions that were supposed to remain private.
The competitors took a soft approach with Paul Weiss’s rainmakers, saying that they sympathized with the lawyers’ plight but that if they wanted out of the turmoil they could name their price. Lawyers at another major law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, also mulled whether to try to lure partners away from Paul Weiss, four of the people said.
The outreach from other firms heightened the panic that had been roiling Paul Weiss after Mr. Trump issued the executive order, which restricted the firm’s lawyers from dealing with the government, including entering federal buildings. The order also said companies doing business with Paul Weiss, which has deep ties to the Democratic Party and its causes, could lose their government contracts.
Another law firm, Perkins Coie, received a similar order, but decided to challenge it in court. At first, Paul Weiss hoped to create a unified front with other big law firms to challenge the order issued against it, too. But the threat of losing its top lawyers compounded worries that clients would flee.
Some partners were particularly worried that Scott Barshay, the head of the corporate practice, might leave and that other lawyers would follow him, according to four of the people briefed on the firm’s deliberations. Even if the firm successfully fought the order in court, it would be labeled an enemy of Mr. Trump and struggle to gain government approval for deals.
So Paul Weiss quickly cut a deal with Mr. Trump that requires the firm to do $40 million in pro bono work for causes supported by the White House.
“We waited for firms to support us in the wake of the president’s executive order,” Paul Weiss’s chairman, Brad Karp, wrote in an email to the firm on Sunday. “Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.”
Jon Ballis, chairman of Kirkland & Ellis, said in a statement that his firm had not tried to recruit Paul Weiss attorneys. A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman similarly denied trying to recruit the firm’s lawyers. A representative for Wachtell Lipton said the firm had never approached any Paul Weiss attorneys.
Mr. Trump’s executive order exposed a vulnerability at Paul Weiss. Formally called Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the firm is known for its pugnacious litigators, who appear in court. But the litigation attorneys in recent years have taken a back seat to corporate deal makers. The firm now relies increasingly on keeping those highly paid corporate lawyers happy and bringing in business.
Large law firms are locked in an escalating battle for legal talent. Big firms are regularly poaching top lawyers to bolster their practices and bring in clients who can generate more fees. Top performers at big firms can take home more than $20 million a year. At Paul Weiss, which operates around the world and employs more than 2,000 people, the corporate practice is now the main source of revenue. The firm took in about $2.6 billion in total revenue in 2024, up from about $2 billion the year before, according to Law.com.
This year has gotten off to a slow start for many big law firms as uncertainty around tariffs and federal job cuts has chilled corporate merger activity, typically a big moneymaker.
Losing top lawyers when deals are scarce would be particularly hard. When lawyers leave one firm for another, they usually take their clients with them, and that means less fee revenue.
Over the last several years, Paul Weiss has done its own share of poaching, luring corporate lawyers away from rivals with huge pay packages.
One of the biggest hires was Mr. Barshay, a rainmaker at Cravath, Swaine & Moore who went to Paul Weiss in 2016 and is now chair of its corporate department, which advises companies on mergers and other transactions. Mr. Barshay’s clients include IBM, Qualcomm, General Electric and Chevron.
While top lawyers, including Mr. Barshay, assured Mr. Karp and others that they had no plans to leave, the leadership still worried that there could be an exodus, three of the people briefed on the conversations said.
As Paul Weiss debated how to respond to the executive order, Mr. Karp regularly assembled a small group of its top brass, including Mr. Barshay; Paul Basta, co-chair of the restructuring department; Matthew Abbott, global co-chair of the mergers and acquisitions group; and Angelo Bonvino, global co-head of that group.
Across the firm, there was a mix of opinions about how to respond, four people inside Paul Weiss said. Some partners wanted to fight Mr. Trump’s executive order in court. Some associates, lawyers typically at the beginning of their careers, also wanted to resist.
But among the leadership, there was deep concern about how many of the firm’s lawyers would be able to keep doing their jobs. Federal agencies often have to sign off on corporate mergers and stock offerings.
Even if a judge stayed the executive order, Paul Weiss would be tarred as being on Mr. Trump’s bad side. Clients, these senior partners argued, would eventually look to hire a law firm with a more favorable standing in Washington.
Mr. Barshay was among those who supported making a deal with Mr. Trump, and ultimately the lawyers heading the firm’s other business lines were supportive of a resolution, three people briefed on the decision-making said.
But some lawyers, led by Kannon Shanmugam, a top litigator at the firm, had prepared a legal challenge in case Paul Weiss couldn’t make a deal, the people said.
Mr. Karp boarded a private jet on March 18 for his meeting at the White House early the next day. He went to the Oval Office alone. Mr. Trump was accompanied by his chief of staff, Susie Wiles; his adviser Steve Witkoff; and his personal legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn.
And there was one more person Mr. Trump told the group he wanted to dial in to the meeting — Robert Giuffra, co-chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, according to two people who were familiar with what took place.
Mr. Giuffra, who has known Mr. Trump for many years, recently agreed to handle Mr. Trump’s appeal of his conviction on charges that he covered up a hush-money deal with the porn star Stormy Daniels in a New York State court.
Initially the conversation among the president and the two legal rivals focused on golf, the people said. Then the discussion turned to Mr. Trump’s concerns about Paul Weiss’s long association with Democratic politics.
Law firms are sometimes aligned with a political party. But Paul Weiss’s involvement in litigation against the first Trump administration on issues like immigration policy stood out. Also, when the Manhattan district attorney’s office investigated some of Mr. Trump’s business dealings, Paul Weiss lent out two associates to the office to help build a potential case.
Mr. Giuffra was brought in by Mr. Trump to work with Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Karp and Bill Burck, a lawyer who was advising Mr. Karp, on the details of the agreement. Mr. Giuffra’s involvement was an awkward twist, given the competitiveness between his firm and Paul Weiss.
Also involved behind the scenes was the president’s adviser Stephen Miller, a polarizing figure from the first Trump administration, two people briefed on the matter said.
Asked about the meeting and Mr. Miller’s involvement, a White House spokesman did not address the question and instead praised Mr. Trump for his pressure on major law firms to work with his government.
The meeting resulted in a deal, and by Thursday evening Mr. Trump had announced that he was lifting the executive order. Mr. Karp sought to assure his firm that the deal was consistent with Paul Weiss’s values.
But he has faced a barrage of public condemnation for making the deal, and many critics said it would only embolden the president to seek retribution against more law firms. Some of the criticism came from a group of roughly 140 Paul Weiss alumni who signed a letter to Mr. Karp, calling the decision to settle “cowardly.”
“It is a permanent stain on the face of a great firm that sought to gain a profit by forfeiting its soul,” the lawyers wrote in the letter, which was released publicly by Common Cause, a nonpartisan government watchdog.
So far, Paul Weiss appears not to have lost any partners or big clients.
One client who wanted to leave was Steven Schwartz, a lawyer facing federal foreign bribery charges in New Jersey. Mr. Schwartz quickly hired defense lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell to represent him out of concern that Mr. Trump’s executive order would make it impossible for Paul Weiss to represent him.
But since the executive order was lifted last week, Mr. Schwartz has indicated that he may have second thoughts about changing counsel, according to court filings in the case.
On Sunday, Mr. Karp insisted in his email to the firm that the deal was necessary for Paul Weiss’s survival.
“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,” he wrote.
By Tuesday, another law firm was in the president’s cross hairs.
Mr. Trump issued an executive order against Jenner & Block, which had employed a top lawyer who worked with the special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigation into whether Mr. Trump had invited Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In a statement announcing the order, the White House said “President Trump is delivering on his promise to end the weaponization of government.”
Maggie Haberman and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting.
