The New York Bar Foundation gala typically boasts a country club vibe with golf claps, rubber chicken, and everyone pretending they’re not checking their phones under the table. It’s a crowd whose idea of rebellion is leaving before dessert. So when a crowd gathered outside Gotham Hall sporting signs calling out elite Biglaw firms for prostrating themselves before the Trump administration, and someone inside started heckling Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp like he was bombing at the Apollo, it became abundantly clear that the legal industry’s self-inflicted rot spread all the way to its mahogany-paneled core.
The 75th edition of the New York State Bar Association’s event described itself as “honoring extraordinary leadership and lasting impact.” With Paul Weiss taking a prominent role on this night, marrying that tagline to the very first firm to wave the white flag in Trump’s illegal bullying campaign, inspiring eight other copycats and ushering in the significant chilling of social justice work across the legal industry likely to continue for the rest of the administration’s tenure elevated the event to Needful Things territory.
Paul Weiss enjoys an impressive pro bono track record dating back decades. At Friday’s event, Karp stressed that history and the firm’s ongoing efforts to fight for reproductive freedom and pushing back against gun manufacturers… but the pledge to provide free legal services to satisfy Trump loomed over everything as the Ghost of Legal Ethics Present.
“One lone heckler in the ballroom also voiced their distaste with Karp’s decision,” wrote American Lawyer, “and continuously yelled ‘for Trump?’ as Karp listed the firm’s pro bono accomplishments, such as its pledge to devote $175 million toward pro bono work in 2025.”
“For Trump?” — striking the ear like a 2025 Biglaw equivalent of “Got Milk?” — highlights the gravity of Biglaw’s error in signing on to these deals. For a firm with $175 million in pro bono work annually, a one-time commitment of $40 million to a handful of vaguely conservative-friendly charities is not much of an imposition. Even the firms following Paul Weiss’s lead, all of whom ended up committing more free work, must have walked away quietly excited that Trump doesn’t understand how quickly tens of millions of dollars adds up in Biglaw billing. While Trump ranted to the public about having a billion in free legal services to use after he left office, the firms themselves will probably close the book on these deals by the end on the year.
Because they fundamentally don’t grasp the damage that they’ve done.
Their deals might be cheap on paper — or in Truth Social’s digital crayon as the case may be — but Faustian bargains aren’t measured by the four squares of the document. Trump has made clear he believes these deals are more expansive than the firms claim, seeing them more as vassalage oaths than settlements. “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” Trump said. “Nobody can believe it. Law firms are just saying, ‘Where do I sign? Where do I sign?’” The fact that the firms seem terrified to respond plainly when lawmakers ask basic questions about the deals, shows just how much the firms still FEAR reprisal if they push back on that claim. They continue to operate under the belief that Trump can throw out the deal and ask for more at any moment. And this makes everything they do suspect, presumptively a product of a quid pro quo with bad faith actors.
But the collateral damage extends far beyond the firms themselves. In a perverse way, Paul Weiss and the other capitulators have enjoyed more freedom of action this year, willing to cross the administration on some matters with limited confidence that their deals will hold. The decline in social justice work across the industry is a direct byproduct of these deals — Trump asserted the power to punish firms for pro bono work, and the surrendering firms told the market, “we agree.” Once you establish “collaboration with authoritarianism” as an acceptable business development strategy, every other firm takes judicial notice. Any firm that hadn’t already earned Trump’s ire knew the biggest, deepest pockets in law had abandoned the fight. By settling, the top of Biglaw left the rest of the industry exposed.
The result is the tragic human cost of an industry that’s mostly abandoned the field, even if the individual firms managed to pat themselves on the back for staying committed to matters that amount to drops in the bucket.
Paul Weiss partner Loretta Lynch picked up one of the event’s Champion of Justice awards. As recounted by American Lawyer:
“We must never forget that our greatest progress at many times in this country has often come after our greatest trials and tribulations,” Lynch said. “We also have to remember as we deal with the trials and tribulations of the day, this has actually never been missing. As we look back on our country’s 250 years, it’s clear that our path towards justice and equality has always had twists and turns and sometimes outright reversals, but we have always pushed on. And with every challenge met, we get a little bit closer to our ideas and at every turn, when our own struggles have threatened to tear us apart, and yes that has happened, we turn to the law.”
And when turning to the law might present short-term difficulties, we can always just make a deal with those acting illegally, she pointedly did not add.
Earlier: ‘Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further’: What Darth Vader Should Teach Law Firms About Settling With Trump
Simpson Thacher Becomes Latest Surrender Firm To Join Up With Trump’s International House Of Tariffs
Paul Weiss, Kirkland Doing Free Trump Commerce Department Work As Part Of ‘Please Don’t Hurt Us Daddy’ Deals
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post Heckler Asks ‘For Trump?’ As Paul Weiss Describes Pro Bono Work At Gala Dinner appeared first on Above the Law.
The New York Bar Foundation gala typically boasts a country club vibe with golf claps, rubber chicken, and everyone pretending they’re not checking their phones under the table. It’s a crowd whose idea of rebellion is leaving before dessert. So when a crowd gathered outside Gotham Hall sporting signs calling out elite Biglaw firms for prostrating themselves before the Trump administration, and someone inside started heckling Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp like he was bombing at the Apollo, it became abundantly clear that the legal industry’s self-inflicted rot spread all the way to its mahogany-paneled core.
The 75th edition of the New York State Bar Association’s event described itself as “honoring extraordinary leadership and lasting impact.” With Paul Weiss taking a prominent role on this night, marrying that tagline to the very first firm to wave the white flag in Trump’s illegal bullying campaign, inspiring eight other copycats and ushering in the significant chilling of social justice work across the legal industry likely to continue for the rest of the administration’s tenure elevated the event to Needful Things territory.
Paul Weiss enjoys an impressive pro bono track record dating back decades. At Friday’s event, Karp stressed that history and the firm’s ongoing efforts to fight for reproductive freedom and pushing back against gun manufacturers… but the pledge to provide free legal services to satisfy Trump loomed over everything as the Ghost of Legal Ethics Present.
“One lone heckler in the ballroom also voiced their distaste with Karp’s decision,” wrote American Lawyer, “and continuously yelled ‘for Trump?’ as Karp listed the firm’s pro bono accomplishments, such as its pledge to devote $175 million toward pro bono work in 2025.”
“For Trump?” — striking the ear like a 2025 Biglaw equivalent of “Got Milk?” — highlights the gravity of Biglaw’s error in signing on to these deals. For a firm with $175 million in pro bono work annually, a one-time commitment of $40 million to a handful of vaguely conservative-friendly charities is not much of an imposition. Even the firms following Paul Weiss’s lead, all of whom ended up committing more free work, must have walked away quietly excited that Trump doesn’t understand how quickly tens of millions of dollars adds up in Biglaw billing. While Trump ranted to the public about having a billion in free legal services to use after he left office, the firms themselves will probably close the book on these deals by the end on the year.
Because they fundamentally don’t grasp the damage that they’ve done.
Their deals might be cheap on paper — or in Truth Social’s digital crayon as the case may be — but Faustian bargains aren’t measured by the four squares of the document. Trump has made clear he believes these deals are more expansive than the firms claim, seeing them more as vassalage oaths than settlements. “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” Trump said. “Nobody can believe it. Law firms are just saying, ‘Where do I sign? Where do I sign?’” The fact that the firms seem terrified to respond plainly when lawmakers ask basic questions about the deals, shows just how much the firms still FEAR reprisal if they push back on that claim. They continue to operate under the belief that Trump can throw out the deal and ask for more at any moment. And this makes everything they do suspect, presumptively a product of a quid pro quo with bad faith actors.
But the collateral damage extends far beyond the firms themselves. In a perverse way, Paul Weiss and the other capitulators have enjoyed more freedom of action this year, willing to cross the administration on some matters with limited confidence that their deals will hold. The decline in social justice work across the industry is a direct byproduct of these deals — Trump asserted the power to punish firms for pro bono work, and the surrendering firms told the market, “we agree.” Once you establish “collaboration with authoritarianism” as an acceptable business development strategy, every other firm takes judicial notice. Any firm that hadn’t already earned Trump’s ire knew the biggest, deepest pockets in law had abandoned the fight. By settling, the top of Biglaw left the rest of the industry exposed.
The result is the tragic human cost of an industry that’s mostly abandoned the field, even if the individual firms managed to pat themselves on the back for staying committed to matters that amount to drops in the bucket.
Paul Weiss partner Loretta Lynch picked up one of the event’s Champion of Justice awards. As recounted by American Lawyer:
“We must never forget that our greatest progress at many times in this country has often come after our greatest trials and tribulations,” Lynch said. “We also have to remember as we deal with the trials and tribulations of the day, this has actually never been missing. As we look back on our country’s 250 years, it’s clear that our path towards justice and equality has always had twists and turns and sometimes outright reversals, but we have always pushed on. And with every challenge met, we get a little bit closer to our ideas and at every turn, when our own struggles have threatened to tear us apart, and yes that has happened, we turn to the law.”
And when turning to the law might present short-term difficulties, we can always just make a deal with those acting illegally, she pointedly did not add.
Earlier: ‘Pray I Don’t Alter It Any Further’: What Darth Vader Should Teach Law Firms About Settling With Trump
Simpson Thacher Becomes Latest Surrender Firm To Join Up With Trump’s International House Of Tariffs
Paul Weiss, Kirkland Doing Free Trump Commerce Department Work As Part Of ‘Please Don’t Hurt Us Daddy’ Deals
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
