One of many powerhouse legislation companies that caved to President Donald Trump and agreed to supply him with hundreds of thousands in professional bono authorized providers to keep away from an govt order concentrating on it has been admonished by the household of one of many agency’s late companions who accuse it of cowering and caving to Trump.
“We were utterly stunned,” two granddaughters of the late Decide Simon Rifkind, who was a reputation companion with the worldwide agency Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, wrote of their response in a letter to the agency’s chairman, in accordance to a duplicate obtained by The New York Instances.
“You traveled to Washington to surrender before you had even begun to fight,” Amy and Nina Rifkind, who’re each training legal professionals, wrote to Brad Karp in a letter dated March 27.
The almost 150-year-old legislation agency, colloquially generally known as Paul Weiss, agreed to $40 million in free authorized providers to keep away from being federally blackballed partly as a result of one of many agency’s former attorneys overseeing an investigation into Trump’s funds earlier than he turned president.
Trump’s govt order was one in all a number of he signed towards giant legislation companies whose legal professionals have been concerned in work that he has disagreed with.
Three different companies — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Milbank — have additionally every pledged $100 million in free authorized work to Trump to keep away from authorized retaliation. A few of Trump’s different focused legislation companies have vowed to struggle his challenges.
Michael M. Santiago by way of Getty Pictures
Of their letter, Amy and Nina Rifkind mentioned that their grandfather by no means would have rolled over to Trump’s risk and not using a struggle. Additionally they careworn that “when the country hovers between a new authoritarianism and its longstanding freedoms, that what is good for the nation and rule of law is good for Paul, Weiss, not the other way around.”
“We are confident that neither our grandfather, nor his colleagues with whom he built Paul, Weiss, would have negotiated a truce for themselves when the rest of the legal professional remains under threat for doing its jobs as lawyers,” they wrote.
Going ahead, the ladies requested that Karp cease “invoking our grandfather’s name to justify your actions” and that he “support publicly the law firms that are opposing governmental attacks for the clients they advise and the attorneys they hire and to defend the erosion of the rule of law in the courts.”
Michael M. Santiago by way of Getty Pictures
Greater than 140 former Paul Weiss associates and staffers additionally signed a public letter final month that protested the agency’s “craven surrender” to Trump.
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“We expected the firm to be a leader in standing up for the legal profession, the adversary system, and the right to counsel,” the letter learn. “Instead of a ringing defense of the values of democracy, we witnessed a craven surrender to, and thus complicity in, what is perhaps the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy.”
Karp expressed gratitude to Trump in a press release issued by the White Home after the chief order was dropped towards the agency.
“We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration,” he mentioned.
