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The law firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, capitulated to the president’s threats. The descendants of the man who wrote its high-minded principles told Mr. Karp that he had betrayed them.
April 2, 2025, 12:03 p.m. ET
Two weeks ago, Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, announced that President Trump would dismiss an executive order aimed at the law firm in return for commitments that included $40 million in pro bono legal services for causes Mr. Trump championed.
Mr. Karp said in an staffwide email that the deal was consistent with the giant firm’s statement of principles. The precepts were written in 1963 by its esteemed name partner, Judge Simon H. Rifkind, to cement the firm’s fidelity to democracy and the law.
But last week, Judge Rifkind’s granddaughters Amy and Nina Rifkind, both lawyers themselves, wrote to Mr. Karp, saying they were stunned by the deal he had personally hammered out at the White House, and by how he had invoked their grandfather’s principles to justify it.
“Amid our heartbreak about the assault on rule of law in our country and the executive order targeting Paul Weiss,” the Rifkind sisters wrote, “you traveled to Washington to surrender before you had even begun to fight.”
They added: “It is plain to us, as it would have been to our grandfather, that taking action to stay off an enemies list does not advance the rule of law as embodied in the statement of principles, it undercuts it and emboldens those who seek to dismantle it.”
The Rifkinds’ two-page letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, echoes reactions that have reverberated through the legal community in the wake of the firm’s deal with Mr. Trump. Critics have accused the firm of capitulating to intimidation, rather than fighting the order in court. Mr. Karp has told colleagues that the deal was necessary because Paul Weiss faced a threat unlike any in its 150-year history.
