The lady doth protest too much
Brad Karp attempts to circle the wagons
A very bright colleague of mine sent over Brad Karp’s firm-wide email attempt to explain the decision to make a deal with the Trump administration, suggesting that the deal wasn’t as straightforwardly bad as I recently argued. I read the email and took it seriously. And I certainly take my colleague to be an incisive mind. I thought I would share (and build out) my response to him here.
Please don’t mistake my point. Paul Weiss was placed in an unwinnable position, and the fact that its peer firms reacted as though there was blood in the water—rather than circling the wagons—speaks to a deeper ethical failure across our so-called “leading” firms.
There is no way through this without someone putting it on the line.
It’s no accident that, after the first targeted firm gave the administration a win, Trump escalated the pressure.
Bite by bite, impossible situation by impossible situation. That’s the playbook.
If anything, were I to revise my piece, it would remain just as scathing—but its target would broaden. I understand Mr. Karp’s decision, even if I disagree with it. The larger failure belongs to the elite class writ large, who peacock as brave but wilt at the prospect of actual consequence. Trump has a predator’s sense for weakness, and he exploited it to perfection here.
All that said, it’s easy—years or decades later—to discern what the “right” call was. It’s much harder in the moment, when the stakes feel personal, existential, immediate. But the moral calculus doesn’t change just because fear enters the frame.
Indeed, Mr. Karp’s assertion that the matter is now “behind” the firm displays such naïveté that it beggars belief. It also misapprehends the issue entirely. Let’s break it down into parts.
Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that is almost certainly illegal. Faced with a similar EO, Perkins Coie challenged it and obtained injunctive relief. Judge Beryl Howell remarked that the EO—and the argument that such orders were unreviewable by the judiciary—sent “chills” down her spine.
Paul Weiss knew this order wouldn’t survive a legal challenge, but they didn’t want a victory in court. They wanted quiet. So Mr. Karp chose to play Let’s Make a Deal, citing the existential threat to his firm and its obligations to its clients.
(Notably, at least one such client reportedly wondered why Paul Weiss hadn’t consulted them before making that decision.)
What Mr. Karp skates past is the central issue: these Executive Orders are designed to intimidate. They exist to interfere with a firm’s (and its lawyers’) professional judgment. They strike at the very core of legal ethics. In the Paul Weiss case, the pretext was especially thin—a former attorney who had once worked there later participated in an investigation of Trump. That tenuous connection was enough to justify a sweeping claim that the firm had engaged in “harmful activity.”
“Harmful activity.” It’s elastic by design. It means whatever the man in power wants it to mean.
The aim of these orders is clear: to punish attorneys who dare to represent the “wrong” people. To chill future representation. To scare firms away from politics. It’s not a theory—it’s a tactic. And the profession’s response to that tactic matters.
Faced with a capricious, chilling, and transparently illegal EO—one that can be adapted and expanded to target any lawyer or firm who angers the President—Mr. Karp tried to save the firm’s hide through compromise.
But lawyers are not merely businesspeople. When we’re sworn in, we become officers of the court. That phrase may sound antiquated, but it carries weight. We are tasked with upholding the independence and integrity of the legal system. That principle is foundational.
It’s right there in the Preamble to the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct:
Self-regulation also helps maintain the legal profession's independence from government domination. An independent legal profession is an important force in preserving government under law, for abuse of legal authority is more readily challenged by a profession whose members are not dependent on government for the right to practice.
This administration is going after lawyers precisely because we have traditionally been an independent power base—full of headstrong brawlers, ready for a fight.
Or so we like to think.
But the truth is, that’s a self-bestowed reputation. In reality, most of us are just bullies in suits—ready to throw punches only when the other side is weaker. When someone bigger shows up, we fold. Not because we believe in compromise but because we value our own comfort more.
We say we’re guardians of the rule of law. But when that role comes with real risk?
Well, we wouldn’t want the profit margins to suffer.
Shame on us.