A lengthy email from the chair of the law firm Paul Weiss to staffers on Sunday contains rhetorical snippets that could be plucked from a courtroom procedural.
Yet Brad Karp wasn’t trying to convince a judge. He was trying to show some 2,500 employees that a deal the firm cut with the Trump administration to escape a punishing executive order didn’t represent a capitulation.
It’s not clear he made the case.
The email, at more than 1,600 words, appears to offer a muddled apology, said David Clementson, an associate professor of public relations at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“Either apologize if you did something wrong, or don’t apologize,” he told Business Insider, saying that the email contains “gradations of both.”
President Donald Trump’s March 14 executive order targeted Paul Weiss, which is known for its ties to Democrats, over the firm’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and promised a review of its government contracts. The president also took aim in the order at a former attorney with the firm, Mark Pomerantz, who worked on a Manhattan district attorney inquiry into Trump’s finances.
The pressure from the White House resulted in an Oval Office meeting involving Karp and Trump. Those talks yielded an agreement for the firm to provide $40 million worth of pro bono work to the government.
‘Hyberbolic langugage’
In his memo, Karp wrote that the period has been “profoundly unsettling” to the firm’s employees and that many people at Paul Weiss were understandably “uncomfortable” about the decision to strike an agreement with the White House.
He also said the executive order was unprecedented in the firm’s 150-year history and that it “could easily have destroyed our firm.”
Clementson, who studies crisis communications, said the memo’s references to an “existential crisis” and “impossibly challenging circumstances” could have gone too far.
“You’ve got this high-intensity, hyperbolic language, which tends to backfire,” he said.
Research shows people often doubt the truthfulness of a statement when it invokes emotional language, he said. In addition, one of the essential actions in a crisis is to project calm.
Clementson added that phrases conveying that “we’re breaking the glass, pulling the fire alarm” aren’t what an audience wants to hear.
Paul Weiss didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Clementson said that the situation would have appeared more like a victory for the firm had it gone to staffers sooner with a more fulsome defense of its negotiations with Trump.
The Sunday memo, which followed one sent to staffers not long after the White House issued a subsequent executive order involving the deal, is likely an indication that at least some of the firm’s staffers were unswayed, Kevin Donahue, a 30-year veteran of crisis management work who is managing director and head of the crisis practice at Falls & Co., told BI.
Clementson said the firm needed to be ready to unleash a fusillade of communications — starting internally.
“If your business already knows that something could be hitting the fan, you need to get out in front of it yourself,” he said.
A bet-the-company moment
In the email, Karp wrote the money the pro bono work the firm agreed to do on behalf of the Trump administration was in areas in which “we are already doing significant work.” These include helping veterans, fighting antisemitism, and “promoting the fairness of the justice system.”
Clementson said it would have been better for the firm to underscore that rather than fighting Trump’s bottomless legal resources, it chose to direct $40 million worth of its resources to support causes with which it is already aligned.
The firm’s revenue topped more than $2.6 billion in 2024, The New York Times has reported.
The additional spending on pro bono work might represent only a fraction of the revenue at risk, said Gina Rubel, CEO at Furia Rubel Communications, which advises law firms and their clients on crisis communications and public relations.
“They didn’t want to have to capitulate,” she said. Yet, the legal profession is under attack, Rubel said, and the situation Paul Weiss faces is indeed a “bet-the-company” moment, as Karp indicated.
Rubel, a lawyer though she no longer practices, said attorneys often tell clients it’s better to settle than to litigate. Given the amount of Paul Weiss business that could have been at risk, Karp appeared to have reached that conclusion, she said.
She said Karp also has a fiduciary duty to the firm to keep it going.
Rubel said he made that point in the memo, which, she said, also addresses so many of the things that people have been saying and speaks directly to the court of public opinion.
Donahue said Karp might have succeeded in gaining some workers’ trust because it made clear Paul Weiss considered fighting the executive order in court, as at least one other firm has done. Yet, ultimately, Donahue said, Paul Weiss concluded too many clients would have perceived the firm as persona non grata, as Karp wrote.
Donahue said it’s likely the legal fight would have exacted a further toll on the firm’s reputation.
Donahue said the effectiveness of Karp’s Sunday message will likely become clearer in the coming weeks and months. But ultimately, he said, the firm had to do something.
“This is a significant threat,” Donahue said. “Had they let it percolate, they may not have ever come back from that.”
Read the full article here
