Paul Weiss’ Progressive Culture Fell Victim to the Vampire Rule

I recently learned about the “vampire rule”—which provides, in a nutshell, that a vampire can’t enter your home unless you let it in. The rule’s most famous expression can be found in Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic horror novel, “Dracula”: A vampire “may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please.”

The rule figures prominently in “Sinners,” which just snagged a record 16 Oscar nominations. It’s also invoked in discussions of Wolford v. Lopez, a pending US Supreme Court case about whether Hawaii can prohibit the carrying of handguns on private property unless the property owner affirmatively grants permission.

And the vampire rule might be an apt explanation for the sudden resignation of Brad Karp as chairman of Paul Weiss, the firm he has led since 2008. Allow me to explain. (This story is based on conversations with current and former partners and associates at Paul Weiss—who were not willing to speak on the record, given the sensitivity of the issues and the firm’s desire to reduce its media coverage.)

For decades, Paul Weiss was known primarily as a litigation powerhouse. Its most celebrated lawyers—including Arthur Liman, Martin “Marty” London, Ted Wells, former federal judge Simon Rifkind, current federal judges Lewis Kaplan and Colleen McMahon—were litigators. And roughly two-thirds of the firm’s revenue came from litigation.

And it wasn’t just a litigation firm, but a particular kind of litigation firm. As former partner (and former Homeland Security secretary) Jeh Johnson told me, it was a public-spirited and politically engaged firm, with deep ties in Democratic circles.

In 2008, Karp—a veteran litigator—became chair. He had big ambitions for Paul Weiss, eager to grow its profitability and prestige further. Karp succeeded in many ways: Between 2008 and 2026, the firm rose in industry rankings of both profits per partner and prestige.

Part of Karp’s strategy involved doubling down on the firm’s traditional strengths. He brought in well-known, well-connected litigators with high-level government experience—such as Johnson (who returned to the firm), former attorney general Loretta Lynch, former associate White House counsel Karen Dunn, and former assistant to the solicitor general Kannon Shanmugam. He maintained the firm’s robust commitment to pro bono work—including prominent, public-facing, and politically inflected matters, such as representing families affected by the first Trump administration’s family-separation policy.

But Karp also built out the firm’s transactional practice. In 2011, he brought in seven partners from O’Melveny & Myers, to help grow Paul Weiss’ private-equity practice. The firm already had a strong relationship with Apollo, after Karp and Paul Weiss helped the PE giant secure what The Wall Street Journal called a “sweet deal” resolving the messy Huntsman/Hexion litigation. But the former O’Melveny lawyers helped Paul Weiss take its Apollo work to the next level—to the point where Apollo is now one of Paul Weiss’ largest and most lucrative clients.

And then in 2016, Karp scored what many regarded at the time as a coup: He convinced Scott Barshay, a star of the M&A bar, to leave Cravath—a preeminent transactional firm—and join Paul Weiss. Over the next decade, Barshay turbocharged the firm’s corporate practice, especially in terms of public M&A. Today, Paul Weiss is a top-10 M&A firm—and corporate work generates a majority of the firm’s revenue, with litigation falling to around 45% (not because the litigation work has declined, but because corporate has grown much faster).

This shift toward transactional practice brought about changes at Paul Weiss. It made the firm more conservative—perhaps politically, but definitely culturally—and more cautious. Corporate America is more politically balanced than the undoubtedly liberal world of Big Law, and some companies are uncomfortable with their outside counsel being too outspokenly progressive.

And some businesses, wanting to avoid controversy of any type, don’t want their lawyers to be involved in conservative causes either—such as the Kirkland & Ellis clients who opposed the Second Amendment work of Paul Clement, who left Kirkland over the issue. Put another way, corporate clients—and many of the Big Law firms who service them—don’t focus on blue or red, but green.

As the Biden administration was drawing to a close, with the Trump administration waiting in the wings and warning about retribution, some corporate partners argued that Paul Weiss needed to maintain a lower profile on political issues. But by then, it was too late. The firm’s leftward leanings and history of hiring high-profile progressives—including Mark Pomerantz, who returned to Paul Weiss after investigating Donald Trump—made the firm a target of the new administration.

In March 2025, the Trump administration hit Paul Weiss with a punitive executive order. As Karp explained in a firm-wide email, Paul Weiss considered fighting the order in court. But in the end, the firm entered into a controversial settlement with the administration—a position strongly advocated for by Paul Weiss’ ascendant corporate partners, especially Barshay, who believed they needed to stay in the good graces of the federal government to get many of their deals done.

Then last month, the Department of Justice released some three million pages of documents related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The emails included previously undisclosed correspondence between Karp and Epstein, showing a friendlier relationship than the firm had previously acknowledged.

In one email from March 2019, Karp commented on a draft motion, prepared by Epstein’s lawyers, that opposed an effort by Epstein victims to modify his (scandalously lenient) plea deal. Karp praised the motion as being “in great shape” and “overwhelmingly persuasive,” adding that he “particularly liked the argument that the ‘victims’ lied in wait and sat on their rights for their strategic advantage, knowing you were in prison, before they came forward” (quotation marks around “victims” in the original).

Amid the controversy that ensued, Karp resigned as chair (but remains at the firm as a litigation partner). According to media reports, Karp was ousted by some of Paul Weiss’ most powerful partners, led by Barshay—who immediately succeeded Karp as chair.

Based on last year’s Trump deal and this year’s replacement of Karp by Barshay, the first M&A partner to lead the firm, I recently suggested Paul Weiss’ days as a public-spirited, politically engaged firm might be over. One could argue that in many ways, it’s no longer that different from eight other firms, dominated by their deal practices, that reached settlements with Trump.

“What’s most sad about all of this is the destruction of the unique Paul Weiss culture,” a former Paul Weiss partner told me. “Maybe some of it might have been marketing BS, and maybe I’m looking at this through rose-colored glasses—but I really believed in the idea of a special Paul Weiss culture.”

What brought Paul Weiss—and Karp—to this point? Maybe we can think of it like the vampire rule. Hoping to take the firm higher, Karp invited Barshay and other top dealmakers into the firm—and for a time, it worked.

But the corporate partners brought more than just books of business. They instituted a less civically engaged, more bottom-line-driven approach to practice at Paul Weiss—one in which closing deals is paramount, and dealmakers run the firm. That mindset drove last year’s Trump deal—and likely this year’s departure of Karp.

In defense of Karp, perhaps this is less about Paul Weiss and more about Big Law more generally. Law firms were already focusing much more heavily on corporate work over litigation, especially politically tinged litigation. By growing his firm’s transactional practice, Karp was simply bringing Paul Weiss into the present—and keeping it competitive.

Did Karp accelerate certain changes at Paul Weiss? Maybe—but many of them were probably going to happen anyway. The transactional worldview was already inside the house.

David Lat, a lawyer turned writer, publishes Original Jurisdiction. He founded Above the Law and Underneath Their Robes, and is author of the novel “Supreme Ambitions.”

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