Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison has helped engineer ambitious lawsuits against the firearms industry and provided free legal muscle to gun safety groups and the families of mass shooting victims, allowing them to notch wins against Remington and Smith & Wesson.
Since President Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss in March, however, prompting firm chairman Brad Karp to cut a controversial deal pledging $40 million in free legal work to support White House priorities, a page on the firm’s website that touted its victories on behalf of gun safety interests has disappeared. Some advocates now fear that the president’s strong-arming will lead Paul Weiss and other firms to curtail such efforts.
“It’s going to have a chilling effect, for sure,” said Robyn Thomas, who spent nearly two decades as executive director and senior legal advisor at Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence before leaving in 2022. “Firms are going to operate more quietly and be less aggressive. At least in the short term.”
Trump has issued executive orders threatening to withhold federal contracts from Paul Weiss, its clients, and other firms that investigated him, represented his adversaries, or engaged in advocacy that he deems contrary to the country’s interests.
The modern gun safety movement relies on the free or reduced cost legal labor, called pro bono work, that firms provide to advocacy groups and individual plaintiffs. States and local governments nationwide depend on this aid from private firms to defend their firearms restrictions. And proactive litigation that involves bringing suits against the gun industry for alleged misconduct is all but impossible without pro bono support.
Paul Weiss did not respond to an email and voice message asking whether the firm’s agreement with Trump would affect its commitment to pro bono gun violence work. Bloomberg reported on April 11 that evidence of the firm’s extensive efforts to advance socially responsible investing had been scrubbed from its website. References to work on behalf of immigrants and LGBT people have also evaporated.
Thomas spearheaded the Firearms Accountability Counsel Taskforce, which sought to enlist big law in the gun safety cause, in 2016. Paul Weiss was the first firm to join the taskforce, she said, prompting others to sign on. Thomas said that Karp was a critical early ally and had spent his career “standing up for the vulnerable and the rule of law.”
Trump’s executive order threatened the livelihood of Karp’s employees and even the firm’s existence, Thomas said, forcing him into a terrible choice. While she understands the anger that many in the legal world feel toward Karp for settling with the administration, “the real villain,” she said, is Trump.
On March 23, Karp sent his employees an email saying that news reports had mischaracterized the agreement with Trump and that the administration would not be dictating what cases the firm took on. “Instead, we have agreed to commit substantial pro bono resources, in addition to the $130+ million we already commit annually, in areas of shared interest,” Karp wrote. “We will continue all of the existing pro bono work we already do and will continue in our longstanding role as a leader of the private bar in the pro bono and public interest sphere.”
The gun violence page removed from the Paul Weiss website had hailed the firm’s “key role” in obtaining a $73 million settlement with Remington Arms for families whose children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a shooter using a Remington rifle. The page also detailed how the firm helped the families win a “major victory” against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who’d claimed that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax. The firm’s “lead role” in establishing the taskforce was mentioned, as well as suits brought against Smith & Wesson in connection with a 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Those suits, like the Remington case, involve allegations that the gun industry’s marketing practices are irresponsible and dangerous, an argument that has emerged as a way for plaintiffs to sometimes overcome the industry’s civil liability protections.
Eric Ruben, a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law who was involved in the taskforce’s early work, said that he could not say whether Paul Weiss will indeed pull back, but attorneys have ethical obligations to clients and often can’t simply drop them, particularly when they’ve appeared on their behalf in court. He also questioned the enforceability of the administration’s actions: “The executive orders involving these firms are patently unconstitutional, and I am fully confident that the law firms that challenge these orders will prevail. I think it would be a shame if any law firms doing pro bono work to reduce gun violence abandoned those efforts because of an unlawful intimidation campaign by the Trump administration.”
Legal groups of varied ideological leaning have condemned Trump’s moves. But the president has struck deals and extracted promises of free legal services from several, including Latham & Watkins; Wilkie Farr & Gallagher; Skadden Arps; and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. That last firm’s attorneys have also done work with the firearms taskforce.
Not all firms are willing to kneel, however. San Francisco-based Keker, Van Nest & Peters has done pro bono gun violence work, been a taskforce ally, and took an early stand in favor of legal independence, calling on peer firms to join them in backing Perkins Coie in its suit to block enforcement of an executive order against the firm. (WilmerHale and Jenner & Block have also sued and won temporary restraining orders against Trump.)
“Lawyers and big firms: For God’s sake, stand up for the legal profession, and for the Constitution,” the senior partners of Keker, Van Nest & Peters wrote in a recent New York Times opinion piece. “Defend the oath that you took when you became officers of the court.”
Clarification: This story was updated to add detail about when Robyn Thomas left Giffords.
