Brad Karp’s 18-year run atop Paul, Weiss ended yesterday evening with a carefully worded statement about “distractions.”
After days of increasingly uncomfortable headlines stemming from the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein documents, Karp announced he’s stepping down as chair of the firm he’s led for nearly two decades. “Leading Paul, Weiss for the past 18 years has been the honor of my professional life,” Karp said. “Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.”
TL;DR version: the firm would very much like the story to stop being about its chair and his emails with one of the most infamous sex traffickers in modern history… but not enough to cut ties with him entirely because Karp will remain at the firm as a partner.
Over the last several days Karp (and Paul, Weiss) have played whack-a-mole with Epstein-related fallout: watching fawning emails with Epstein and favor requests get splashed out on mainstream media; hedging about regrets; and bailing on a speaking engagement as the documents dropped. One industry source summed up the firm’s mood bluntly, saying, “The firm is circling the wagons. There are people in the firm saying that they think he’s been in the headlines too much. They think it may be a good thing to move on.”
And there’s even more buried in the 3+ million pages. Bloomberg Law reports on emails from 2019 in which Karp reviewed and offered advice on a draft filing related to Epstein’s plea deal fight, a detail that undermines the firm’s longstanding position that Paul, Weiss and Karp never represented Epstein. “The draft motion is in great shape. It’s overwhelmingly persuasive. Truly,” Karp wrote to Epstein on March 3, 2019. He went on to praise an argument suggesting that the “‘victims’ lied in wait and sat on their rights for their strategic advantage,” a line that is… a choice. And then he goes on to make a middling joke about the sexual assault the victims allege. Citing U.S. v. Fokker Services to argue courts couldn’t reject a non-prosecution agreement, Karp added, “Wish there was a different case name than ‘Fokker,’ but we can’t have everything. In all seriousness, I don’t see a credible counter to our arguments. The case law is totally stacked in favor of our position.” Those emails don’t read like distant, incidental contact. They read like lawyering.
Scott Barshay will step into the chair role, offering the kind of fulsome praise that’s customary at moments like this. “Brad has made immense contributions to Paul, Weiss over his more than four decades with the firm,” Barshay said, crediting Karp with transforming the firm “in an unprecedented way.” All of which can be true while also acknowledging that Karp’s final chapter as chair is being written by Epstein documents. It’s also worth noting that Barshay was reportedly a leading voice behind last year’s deeply controversial decision to cut a deal with Donald Trump, promising $40 million in pro bono services to escape an onerous and likely unconstitutional executive order targeting the firm.
And thus the era of Brad Karp as chair is over, even if the fallout from the Epstein files very much is not.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].