Don't Cry for Paul Weiss

The law firm couldn't be happier with how its deal with Donald Trump turned out.

ABC Chicago

President Donald Trump won a big capitulation from a white-shoe law firm on Thursday — and the law firm probably couldn’t be happier about how it ended up.

Trump issued an executive order last week blacklisting Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from federal contracts and security clearances. The entire reason for this was that Mark Pomerantz, a former partner at the firm, worked on the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into Trump’s financial crimes. Trump similarly targeted Perkins Coie, whose political law division was once led by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, and which has traditionally been a go-to firm for Democratic politicians and organizations around the country.

But on Thursday, Trump abruptly rescinded the order against Paul Weiss while leaving in place the one against Perkins Coie. Trump’s price for doing so included getting Paul Weiss to ban DEI in hiring, take on Republican clients, throw the former partner fully under the bus by agreeing that Pomerantz committed “wrongdoing,” and commit to $40 million in pro bono work backing the Trump administration’s initiatives for “assisting our Nation's veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects."

The story being told now is that Trump essentially extorted some spineless lawyers. The New York Times headline said Paul Weiss “ben[t] to Trump’s will,” and noted the firm’s long association with Democrats and current chairman Brad Karp’s work as a fundraiser for Joe Biden. Bill Kristol’s definitely real friend said that nonprofit lawyers are suing the Trump administration because biglaw firms are “too fucking weak” to do it. Democratic commentator Amy Siskind blasted the firm as “soulless cowards” who were “obey[ing] in advance.”

What these analyses miss is that this is the space Paul Weiss was already playing in. Far from losing out, the firm is coming out the other end of this dust-up with Trump better off than it started.

Here’s why.