{"id":159367,"date":"2026-08-03T13:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/08\/03\/did-paul-weiss-partners-seriously-debate-running-the-firms-business-past-stephen-miller\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T13:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:45:12","slug":"did-paul-weiss-partners-seriously-debate-running-the-firms-business-past-stephen-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/08\/03\/did-paul-weiss-partners-seriously-debate-running-the-firms-business-past-stephen-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Paul, Weiss Partners Seriously Debate Running The Firm\u2019s Business Past Stephen Miller?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the day it became the first Biglaw firm to cut a deal with Donald Trump<\/a>, Paul, Weiss has leaned on one talking point above all others: the deal changed nothing. Brad Karp assured the firm that the deal would have \u201cno effect on our work.\u201d Paul, Weiss has spent every month since insisting that everything is fine<\/a>. And asked directly by the New York Times whether the firm\u2019s independence had been jeopardized, a spokeswoman said any such assertion was \u201ccompletely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great. Then somebody\u2019s going to need to explain some things.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times published<\/a> a sprawling report on the Biglaw firm this weekend, which has a ton of unknown-until-now details<\/a>, including an internal exchange among Paul, Weiss partners that\u2019s raising eyebrows. The emails are over the firm\u2019s website for its Center to Combat Hate, the page cataloguing Paul, Weiss\u2019s work against the organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville rally and against the Proud Boys, some of whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy over Jan. 6. Around the time of the Trump deal, the site quietly disappeared. Then leadership had to decide how to put it back up. And one of the options on the table was apparently checking with the White House first. Yikes.<\/p>\n

According to the Times, litigator Karen Dunn<\/a>, who\u2019d helped win a $26 million judgment against the Charlottesville organizers, wanted the site put back exactly as it was, but suggested running it past Bill Burck, the Washington lawyer the firm had hired for the executive-order fight, to make sure it wouldn\u2019t provoke the administration. Partner Angelo Bonvino thought that was naive. What was Burck going to do, he wrote, except \u201cask Boris or Miller to read it.\u201d Better, Bonvino argued, to quietly gut the page themselves and eat a grumpy news article than to route it to the White House for notes. (On the grumpy-news-article front, he had a point \u2014 cataloguing the firms that spent Trump 2.0 quietly purging diversity language<\/a>, stripping pronouns from email signatures<\/a>, and nuking diversity billing codes<\/a> off their websites <\/a>has become a bit of a cottage industry around here.)<\/p>\n

Scott Barshay (the M&A rainmaker Karp imported from Cravath who\u00a0now runs the entire firm<\/a>) characteristically wanted the thing changed and didn\u2019t much care who objected. \u201cI don\u2019t care about the internal audience or the press,\u201d he wrote, noting that having survived the executive order once, he had no appetite for a sequel. Karp landed in the mushy middle, favoring restoration with minimal changes. The site went back up\u2026 minus any mention of the firm having sued the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over Jan. 6.<\/p>\n

If the website fight were an isolated wobble, it might read differently, but alas, it was not isolated. The Times reports that Paul, Weiss\u2019s retreat from anything that might irritate Trumpworld started before<\/em> the executive order, before the inauguration, before there was any deal to hide behind. In October 2024, the firm sued the Defense Department on behalf of Chinese drone-maker DJI, challenging the Pentagon\u2019s designation of the company. After the election, Barshay argued the firm shouldn\u2019t be adversarial to the incoming government. In December, weeks before Trump took office, Paul, Weiss withdrew from the case. The firm\u2019s spokeswoman told the Times that call \u201cwould have been made regardless of which political party was in office.\u201d Which is obviously bullshit because they had already filed suit under a Democratic administration \u2014 they only withdrew because they\u2019re cowards who don\u2019t want to stand up to Trump. Around the same time, after Elon Musk mused on X about which firms were pushing \u201canti-democratic\u201d cases, Paul, Weiss began quietly scrubbing its site of references to its family-reunification work and its LGBTQ work.<\/p>\n

(In fairness, the firm had company. When Above the Law tracked what every Am Law 200 firm was doing<\/a> in the face of Trump\u2019s assault on the profession, quietly stripping DEI and civil-rights content off the website turned out to be one of Biglaw\u2019s more popular responses. Which is an indictment of the entire industry.)<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the case the firm chose not<\/em> to bring. In the days after the deal, Dunn pushed leadership to sue the administration over something \u2014 anything \u2014 as a public signal that Paul, Weiss remained its own master. She went looking for a client, including talking to a reproductive-rights group. Karp was lukewarm. Barshay was strongly opposed, unwilling to stick the firm\u2019s neck out for the sake of independence. The suit never happened. Not long after, Dunn and a cadre of the firm\u2019s best litigators left to start their own shop<\/a>, where they could sue whomever they pleased.<\/p>\n

So the firm dropped a client to steer clear of the incoming administration, talked itself out of the one lawsuit that might have proven it still had a backbone, and sat around debating whether Stephen Miller should get a look at its own anti-hate website. Paul, Weiss of 2025 is a far cry<\/a> from one that defended the rule of law at all costs.<\/p>\n

Earlier:\u00a0<\/strong>Paul Weiss Press Release Captures Everything Broken About Biglaw In One Image<\/a>
Paul, Weiss Grovels To Trump, Gets Out From Under Executive Order<\/a>
Brad Karp\u2019s Paul, Weiss Reign Ends With An Epstein-File Plot Twist<\/a>
Scott Barshay\u2019s Paul, Weiss Makeover: More Money, Less Soul?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Did Paul, Weiss Partners Seriously Debate Running The Firm\u2019s Business Past Stephen Miller?<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrad Karp\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the day it became the first Biglaw firm to cut a deal with Donald Trump<\/a>, Paul, Weiss has leaned on one talking point above all others: the deal changed nothing. Brad Karp assured the firm that the deal would have \u201cno effect on our work.\u201d Paul, Weiss has spent every month since insisting that everything is fine<\/a>. And asked directly by the New York Times whether the firm\u2019s independence had been jeopardized, a spokeswoman said any such assertion was \u201ccompletely false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Great. Then somebody\u2019s going to need to explain some things.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times published<\/a> a sprawling report on the Biglaw firm this weekend, which has a ton of unknown-until-now details<\/a>, including an internal exchange among Paul, Weiss partners that\u2019s raising eyebrows. The emails are over the firm\u2019s website for its Center to Combat Hate, the page cataloguing Paul, Weiss\u2019s work against the organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville rally and against the Proud Boys, some of whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy over Jan. 6. Around the time of the Trump deal, the site quietly disappeared. Then leadership had to decide how to put it back up. And one of the options on the table was apparently checking with the White House first. Yikes.<\/p>\n

According to the Times, litigator Karen Dunn<\/a>, who\u2019d helped win a $26 million judgment against the Charlottesville organizers, wanted the site put back exactly as it was, but suggested running it past Bill Burck, the Washington lawyer the firm had hired for the executive-order fight, to make sure it wouldn\u2019t provoke the administration. Partner Angelo Bonvino thought that was naive. What was Burck going to do, he wrote, except \u201cask Boris or Miller to read it.\u201d Better, Bonvino argued, to quietly gut the page themselves and eat a grumpy news article than to route it to the White House for notes. (On the grumpy-news-article front, he had a point \u2014 cataloguing the firms that spent Trump 2.0 quietly purging diversity language<\/a>, stripping pronouns from email signatures<\/a>, and nuking diversity billing codes<\/a> off their websites <\/a>has become a bit of a cottage industry around here.)<\/p>\n

Scott Barshay (the M&A rainmaker Karp imported from Cravath who\u00a0now runs the entire firm<\/a>) characteristically wanted the thing changed and didn\u2019t much care who objected. \u201cI don\u2019t care about the internal audience or the press,\u201d he wrote, noting that having survived the executive order once, he had no appetite for a sequel. Karp landed in the mushy middle, favoring restoration with minimal changes. The site went back up\u2026 minus any mention of the firm having sued the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over Jan. 6.<\/p>\n

If the website fight were an isolated wobble, it might read differently, but alas, it was not isolated. The Times reports that Paul, Weiss\u2019s retreat from anything that might irritate Trumpworld started before<\/em> the executive order, before the inauguration, before there was any deal to hide behind. In October 2024, the firm sued the Defense Department on behalf of Chinese drone-maker DJI, challenging the Pentagon\u2019s designation of the company. After the election, Barshay argued the firm shouldn\u2019t be adversarial to the incoming government. In December, weeks before Trump took office, Paul, Weiss withdrew from the case. The firm\u2019s spokeswoman told the Times that call \u201cwould have been made regardless of which political party was in office.\u201d Which is obviously bullshit because they had already filed suit under a Democratic administration \u2014 they only withdrew because they\u2019re cowards who don\u2019t want to stand up to Trump. Around the same time, after Elon Musk mused on X about which firms were pushing \u201canti-democratic\u201d cases, Paul, Weiss began quietly scrubbing its site of references to its family-reunification work and its LGBTQ work.<\/p>\n

(In fairness, the firm had company. When Above the Law tracked what every Am Law 200 firm was doing<\/a> in the face of Trump\u2019s assault on the profession, quietly stripping DEI and civil-rights content off the website turned out to be one of Biglaw\u2019s more popular responses. Which is an indictment of the entire industry.)<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the case the firm chose not<\/em> to bring. In the days after the deal, Dunn pushed leadership to sue the administration over something \u2014 anything \u2014 as a public signal that Paul, Weiss remained its own master. She went looking for a client, including talking to a reproductive-rights group. Karp was lukewarm. Barshay was strongly opposed, unwilling to stick the firm\u2019s neck out for the sake of independence. The suit never happened. Not long after, Dunn and a cadre of the firm\u2019s best litigators left to start their own shop<\/a>, where they could sue whomever they pleased.<\/p>\n

So the firm dropped a client to steer clear of the incoming administration, talked itself out of the one lawsuit that might have proven it still had a backbone, and sat around debating whether Stephen Miller should get a look at its own anti-hate website. Paul, Weiss of 2025 is a far cry<\/a> from one that defended the rule of law at all costs.<\/p>\n

Earlier:\u00a0<\/strong>Paul Weiss Press Release Captures Everything Broken About Biglaw In One Image<\/a>
Paul, Weiss Grovels To Trump, Gets Out From Under Executive Order<\/a>
Brad Karp\u2019s Paul, Weiss Reign Ends With An Epstein-File Plot Twist<\/a>
Scott Barshay\u2019s Paul, Weiss Makeover: More Money, Less Soul?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the day it became the first Biglaw firm to cut a deal with Donald Trump, Paul, Weiss has leaned on one talking point above all others: the deal changed nothing. Brad Karp assured the firm that the deal would have \u201cno effect on our work.\u201d Paul, Weiss has spent every month since insisting that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":159368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-aO9ZmO.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}