Brad Karp Phones Gala Heckler for a ‘Full and Frank Discussion’

Dunnington Bartholow & Miller partner Raymond J. Dowd wasn’t planning to shout at Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp last Friday, but the moment overtook him.

“It was entirely spontaneous,” Dowd said in an interview with Bloomberg Law on Thursday, outing himself as the man who made waves in the industry by heckling Karp at a bar association event over Paul Weiss’ deal with President Donald Trump.

After the event, he got a call from the man he heckled. Dowd declined to provide details of his conversation with Karp but said it was “a full and frank discussion of what transpired.”

“I appreciated him sharing his views,” Dowd said. “He was not expressing rage or anger. I just think he felt quite blindsided, and I said, ‘I felt exactly the same way.’” (Karp declined to comment.)

Dowd, attending the New York Bar Foundation gala, heckled Karp as the Paul Weiss head gave a speech about his firm’s pro bono work. Dowd said he was caught off guard by Karp’s decision to use his speech to discuss Paul Weiss’ deal with Trump.

The Nov. 7 event honored “advocates for justice, equality, and the rule of law,” according to the invitation, including Paul Weiss partner Loretta Lynch, chief legal officer at Apollo Global Management Whitney Chatterjee, and Morrison & Foerster’s Carrie Cohen.

While Karp, in keynote remarks, touted Paul Weiss’ commitment to pro bono work, Dowd repeatedly shouted, “For Trump?”

The tense moment between the Paul Weiss chief and Dowd, a longtime civil litigator with a specialty in copyright law, reflects the divisions in the legal industry over the deals some large law firms struck with Trump this year.

Wall Street firm Paul Weiss lost a string of litigators following its March 20 agreement with Trump to provide $40 million in free legal services. The move got Paul Weiss out from under a punitive executive order that Karp said at the time threatened the firm’s survival.

During the speech, Karp described being “targeted by the current administration.” The remarks were his most extensive public comments on the Trump deal. In the crowd at the Manhattan gala were New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, among other powerful New York legal professionals.

Dowd stands by his concerns about law firm deals with Trump.

“When the executive branch puts their fingers on the scales of justice and says, ‘I’m going to punish you for your viewpoint,’ everybody in the bar should start heckling,” he said.

In retrospect, however, he said he “would have preferred another forum” for a discussion on the issue. Heckling is generally “not how I roll,” he said. “I believe in giving people room to speak.”

It’s his “sincere hope” that his actions now spark conversation. “I think having a larger dialogue on these issues is very important for the future health of the legal profession,” he said.