[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on March 28, 2025.]
The decision was a culminating event in Big Law’s transformation from a noble profession to a collection of profit-maximizing businesses.
1,613.
That’s how many words Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, used in his March 23 memo defending his firm’s capitulation to President Donald Trump.
One would have been enough: greed.
Observers have been shocked and puzzled at Paul Weiss’s refusal to fight Trump’s unconstitutional order aimed at destroying the firm. But its decision was a culminating event in Big Law’s transformation from a noble profession to a collection of profit-maximizing businesses.
The Big Law business model values only what it can measure. And there’s no metric for defending the Constitution, preserving democracy, or upholding the rule of law.
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The Belly of the Beast 