Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

History

Founding (1875–1949)

The firm that eventually became Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was started in New York in 1875 by Samuel William Weiss and Julius Frank as a general commercial practice. In 1923, Samuel's son, Louis Weiss, started his own firm with John F. Wharton. That firm later merged with Samuel's firm, and the new firm became Cohen, Cole, Weiss & Wharton. In the 1930s, the firm represented one of the Scottsboro boys. In 1946, Lloyd K. Garrison and Randolph Paul joined the firm, bringing the firm up to thirteen lawyers. The name changed to Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison.

In 1946, Paul, Weiss became the first major New York law firm to have a female partner, Carolyn Agger. Agger worked in the firm's Washington office, which was established the year she was hired.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was the first black lawyer hired at the firm. When he was hired in 1949, it was the first time ever that a major New York City law firm hired a person of color as an associate.

1950–2000

In 1950, Simon Rifkind joined the firm and it became Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. At the time, the firm had 12 partners, only one of whom did trial work; Rifkind wanted to change that and started to grow the firm's litigation department.

Pauli Murray, a civil rights and gender equality activist, was an associate at Paul, Weiss from 1956 to 1960. In 1966, Rifkind recruited Theodore Sorensen who became the firm's first international lawyer.

Jeh Johnson, a lawyer and the fourth director and secretary of Homeland Security, was hired by Paul, Weiss in 1984, and in 1993 became the firm's first African-American partner.{{Cite web|title=Professionals Jeh Charles Johnson

2001–present

Representation of fossil fuel corporations

Paul, Weiss has represented Exxon Mobil for over a decade in its attempts to dismiss U.S. cities' and states' cases seeking compensation for climate change harms. In 2025, the Supreme Court rejected Paul, Weiss' bid to throw out Honolulu's case before trial. Top-paid partners at Paul, Weiss such as Theodore V. Wells, Jr. tout this work battling climate change cases for Exxon. A 2021 assessment singled out Paul, Weiss among law firms as engaging in the most litigation, lobbying, and transactional work for fossil fuel companies, garnering many millions. The company received the lowest grade in a 2021 scorecard of law firms on climate change actions. The firm had represented fossil fuel companies in 30 cases over the five preceding years. In January and February 2020, students at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, New York University School of Law, and the University of Michigan Law School protested the firm's recruitment events over its representation of Exxon Mobil Corporation.

In 2023, Paul, Weiss defended ExxonMobil in a long-running human rights abuse case involving the company's hiring of soldiers in Indonesia who allegedly committed murder and torture while working for Exxon. Indonesian villagers alleged that soldiers contracted by ExxonMobil committed sexual assault on pregnant women and electrically shocked and inflicted graffiti by knives on villagers' backs. In commenting on the case, Columbia law school lecturer Michael Paradis stated, "Exxon and its lawyers threw everything they could at them, and they overcame it." After Judge Lamberth ordered Exxon to pay around $289,000 in sanctions after finding that Alex Oh (while a partner at Paul, Weiss and enforcement director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) behaved improperly to opposing counsel during the case, Oh resigned as Securities and Exchange enforcement director.

Ranking

On October10, 2007, Paul, Weiss was included in a ranking of Manhattan law firms by the national law student group Building a Better Legal Profession. The organization ranked firms by billable hours, demographic diversity, and pro bono participation. For diversity among partner attorneys, the firm was ranked in the 61st to 80th percentile for Black, Hispanic, Asian, and LGBT categories. Paul, Weiss was also ranked number 52 out of the 74 firms evaluated, for opportunities for advancement for female attorneys. In 2019, the nonprofit group Lawyers of Color reported that Paul, Weiss had the highest percentage of black lawyers of the 400 firms it ranked. In 2020, women comprised 26% of Paul, Weiss' partnership, all equity partners. This is slightly higher than the average for law firms (23.6% as reported by the National Association for Law Placement).

Diversity

In 2018, the firm was criticized when it released a photograph on its LinkedIn of recently promoted partners, all of whom were white. The photograph also included only one woman. Although Paul, Weiss had a reputation for being more diverse than other elite big-law firms, the announcement drew criticisms that even "diverse" big-law firms still partook in racist and sexist methods of employment and promotion. The photograph served as a "lightning rod" for the growing frustration that elite law careers are still largely reserved for white men.

Loretta Lynch, the first black woman to serve as United States attorney general, joined Paul, Weiss in 2019 as a litigation partner.

In 2020, Paul, Weiss said it wanted to join law firms and public-interest organizations across the U.S. in a pro bono effort to root out racism.

Israel–Palestine conflict

In November 2023, amid a wave of pro-Palestine protests on law school campuses, Paul, Weiss was among a group of major law firms who sent letters to law school deans urging them to not allow "antisemitic speech" on campus, broadening the definition of antisemitism to include "criticism of the state of Israel."

Deal with Trump administration

Main article: Targeting law firms and lawyers under the second Trump Administration

In 2025, as part of a retaliatory campaign in 2025 by U.S. president Donald Trump against law firms who had represented political opponents of his, the firm (along with Perkins Coie) was targeted by the Second Donald Trump administration. Executive order 14237 prohibited Paul, Weiss employees from entering government buildings, working for the government, or having security clearances, citing its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and the work of former partner Mark F. Pomerantz, who played a leading role in the investigation that ultimately led to Trump's conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York. On March19, Paul, Weiss told a judge in a New Jersey case that it had been fired by a client because of the order.

In contrast to Perkins Coie, which sued and obtained a temporary restraining order against the executive order, on March20, 2025, Paul, Weiss agreed that, in exchange for the order against them being lifted, the firm would commit $40 million toward pro bono legal services in support of Trump administration goals and that they would no longer pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Pomerantz, who had been a firm partner until 2022, released a statement saying that he had done nothing wrong in his role as a prosecutor.

The move by Paul, Weiss was widely criticized. Over 140 firm alumni wrote a letter saying, "During the first Trump administration, Paul, Weiss lawyers, including many of us, fought to protect civil and human rights with the firm's support [...] That is why it came as a shock to find the firm at the very forefront of capitulation to the Trump administration's bullying tactics." J.Michael Luttig, a judge appointed by George W. Bush, wrote that "Paul, Weiss chose to cower before the powerful and sell out its firm and the nation's legal profession to the President."

According to a March 2025 report by The New Yorker on the negotiations between the Trump administration and Paul, Weiss, the firm's management believed that the price of surrendering to the Trump administration "was tolerable ... fighting the order in court had good prospects of success—but Karp thought that any win would arrive too late." Two granddaughters of Simon Rifkind wrote to Paul, Weiss's managing partner criticizing the firm's decision.

In May 2025, partners Karen Dunn, Bill Isaacson, Jessica Phillips, and Jeannie Rhee departed from Paul, Weiss to start their own firm. Partner Damian Williams left Paul, Weiss for Jenner & Block in June 2025.

Washington, DC-based analyst Nathan Tankus remarked that the "eagerness" shown by powerful law firms to concede to and enter into agreements with the US government is an "early sign" that American institutions are prepared to engage in "systematic appeasement towards Trump's second presidency."

In August 2025, The New York Times reported that Paul, Weiss was doing free legal work for the United States Department of Commerce.

In October 2025, Fabio Bertoni of The New Yorker opined that Paul, Weiss's decision to fold in response to Trump's "unlawful executive order" against the law firm was "shocking at the time, and was taken as a signal within the profession of where the 'smart money' was betting" helping to set a tone whereby other powerful institutions struggled to resist Trump's threats.

Notable representations

Paul, Weiss represents detainees held by the U.S. military at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. A number of the detainees went on a hunger strike to protest alleged inhumane conditions. In response, prison authorities force-fed detainees. Paul, Weiss attorneys filed an emergency application demanding information about the condition of the detainees. In a ruling in October 2005, Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the government to provide the detainees' lawyers with 24 hours' notice before initiating a force-feeding, and to provide lawyers with the detainees' medical records a week before force-feeding.{{cite news | access-date=2010-03-15

Paul, Weiss advised the casino operating unit of Caesars Entertainment in its bankruptcy proceedings, taking over the role from O'Melveny & Myers in 2011. It later became known that Apollo Global Management, a private equity sponsor of Caesars, was also a Paul, Weiss client. Paul, Weiss was found to have a conflict of interest in the matter, although an investigation found no actual harm to Caesars or its creditors.

Paul, Weiss represented the China Medical Technologies (CMED) Audit Committee in investigating an anonymous letter alleging possible illegal and fraudulent activities by management, prior to CMED being discovered to have been the subject of a $355million fraud.

Paul, Weiss issued the report in the Deflategate football inflation controversy in 2015.

In 2016, Fox News hired the firm to conduct an internal investigation about Roger Ailes, leading to the end of Ailes' career.

In 2022, Paul, Weiss was a founding member of the Legal Alliance for Reproductive Rights, a coalition of United States law firms offering free legal services to people seeking and providing abortions in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which overruled Roe v. Wade (1973).

Other major clients that Paul, Weiss has represented in litigation include major financial industry companies such as Blackstone Group, Citibank and Goldman Sachs, as well as tech giants Google and Amazon.

''Pro bono''

In 2018, Paul, Weiss worked pro bono to try to find more than 400 parents who were separated from their families at the southern border of the United States and then deported. The work was part of the federal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit, which was brought against the Trump administration over its family separation policy. The ACLU asked Paul, Weiss to head the committee that worked with three nonprofits to find the parents. By November, almost all of the 400 deported parents had been found.

Notable partners

• John P. Carlin
• Katherine B. Forrest
• Lloyd K. Garrison
• Arthur Joseph Goldberg
• Melinda Haag
• Lewis A. Kaplan
• Brad S. Karp
• Arthur Liman
• Loretta Lynch
• Randolph E. Paul
• Simon H. Rifkind
• Kannon Shanmugam
• Ted Sorensen
• Adlai Stevenson II
• Louis S. Weiss
• Ted Wells
• John F. Wharton

Notable alumni

• Debo Adegbile (associate)
• Richard Briffault (associate)
• William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. (associate)
• Karen Dunn (partner)
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg (summer associate)
• Josh Hsu (associate)
• Hakeem Jeffries (associate)
• Jeh Johnson
• Elena Kagan (summer associate)
• Jared Kushner (summer associate)
• Debra Ann Livingston (associate)
• Louis H. Pollak
• Jeannie Rhee (partner)
• David Rubenstein (associate)
• Sonia Sotomayor (summer associate)
• Damian Williams (partner)
• Martin London (partner)

References

Notes

References

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