Brad Karp, the Epstein files, and the future of Paul Weiss

[MUSIC] Brad Carp had become a household name in big law during his 17 year tenure at the helm of Paul Weiss. But the long-serving chair of the New York firm resigned from his leadership role last week over revelations in the latest batch of the Epstein files. His exit makes him one of the first Americans to resign over the scandal. So today on the podcast, we take a look at why he quit and what next for Paul Weiss? I'm Katrin Griffiths, the lawyer's editor in chief. And I'm Christian Smith, the lawyer's litigation editor. And we are joined by our director of Insight Matt Burn and our deputy insight editor, Nikhil Raj. I go well and to start off with both of you have been covering this, Nikhil and Matt, I think just best to set it out here. What is Brad Carp alleged to have done? >> Thanks, Christian. So Brad Carp, just to be very clear, is not alleged to have done anything wrong or that there is no proof of any wrongdoing against Brad Carp. Why he's quit or why he's stepped down as chair of the firm is because there have been a series of females of the past couple of months that have come out showing his direct interaction with Jeffrey Epstein. There was a first set of emails that was reported on in the media in December, which was him talking to Jeffrey Epstein over email on behalf of a follow-up founder and chief Leon Black. But the latest patch of the files that was released on the 29th January or 30th January, that showed more emails between the two of them, which showed the extent of the communications that he had with Jeffrey Epstein went well beyond his association with Leon Black. So the firm has come out and said that Carp was introduced to Epstein only when he started representing Leon Black and that the firm has never represented Jeffrey Epstein. However, there are emails where Brad Carp is set to have spent an evening at Jeffrey Epstein's house. And he has sent him an email saying thank you for your, thank you for an amazing night. It was truly a night to remember and he's called Jeffrey Epstein amazing. So those are the emails that have eventually led to him stepping down as chair of the firm. The emails show sustained contact between Brad Carp and Jeffrey Epstein from all the way from the end of 2013 up until 2019, which was the year in which Jeffrey Epstein allegedly committed suicide. And the interactions start a range from the interactions cover a wide range of topics from Leon Black, from payments that Apollo was supposed to make to Jeffrey Epstein to him requesting Jeffrey Epstein to get his son in an internship on a Woody Allen set, an invite to a screening to a Woody Allen movie. And there are also email exchanges or message exchanges rather between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon up until 2019 requesting Bannon to get Brad Carp into the Augusta Golf Club. So quite extensive content. I mean, very important to say again that Brad Carp's not suggested of having done anything criminal will be involved on that side of the Epstein saga. Of course, as we've discussed extensively on this podcast, it was only just under a year ago as well that Brad Carp was the first law firm to do a deal with Donald Trump. So it was already somewhat well known outside the legal sphere because of that in the last year. So Matt Bannon, do you think Carp needed to go? I mean, he's resigned as chair, he's still a partner at the firm, but do you think he needed to resign as chair? Yeah, he did. You can imagine the crisis comes, you know, frenzy going on over the days running up to Carp quitting. Can only sort of imagine the conversations, but some of the people I've been speaking to have absolutely expressed some surprise that it took so long and so long in quote marks, we're only talking days really, but as Nicky all said, the seeds of it was sewn at least publicly before Christmas and then there's just been a steady drip and then this next batch. We have no idea what's happened, of course, only what's been publicly released, but we do know that there are more batches to come. We know there are millions more documents. We don't know who's who at all is going to be implicators and anything in those documents, but it's a risk. It's a massive risk and that's what law firms deal in. And as they said, he'd basically become the story and have to go. So the only question really was when and there was a sense of, you know, the firm was maybe taking a few days to figure out what the temperature really was, but I've spoken to people who said absolutely, it was a, you know, Paul Weiss really should have or Brad Carp should have gone pretty much immediately. Yeah, quite right. I mean, I think it's that you can't stand in such proximity to a known trafficker of female flesh and and holds yourself out as a as a chair of a major law firm, but also one who has built his brand actually to a large extent on liberal values, defending the rule of law and so on. So I think there was a huge disjunction there, you know, in in what would happen. You know, and frankly, Paul Weiss can't afford at the moment. Paul Weiss is very much in in the eyes of the wider world. You say Paul Weiss and they go, oh, that that's the firm that that Trump that did do with Trump. It is impossible as a partnership to withstand the, oh, the firm that did the deal with Trump and that hung out with jet free Epstein because of course, that's the way it would have got translated into, you know, a sort of a wider and particularly when we live in a world with a lot of conspiracy theories, you could see already the conspiracy theories that were starting to build that, you know, oh, Brad Carp did this deal with Trump because dot, dot, dot. And so I think there's a sort of, you have to shut that down and then the leader absolutely has to fall on his sword at that point. We're going to talk about succession at Paul Weiss and what next for the firm a little bit later, but I just want to ask you all a sort of question to start off with on that. Unkush Kadori is a senior writer at Politico, but he also used to work in White Collar Crime at Paul Weiss in New York and he wrote something this week suggesting that actually this isn't accountability or anything like that and there was already a succession plan on the way for Paul Weiss and so this is just a kind of acceleration of that that's been going on. Do you think that's fair or do you think? I think there was 100% of succession plan and we all knew what we're going to talk about it where that succession plan was going to go, but, you know, no chair wants to leave before the time allotted and particularly not in these circumstances in these, you know, terrible sort of reputational circumstances. Yeah, I don't think there's anything convenient about this at all, but Brad Carp had been the leader of Paul Weiss for a very long time and was obviously already considering his exit, you know, way before this. He would have been considering that for quite a time. I think he's in his fourth five year term, halfway through his fourth five year term. It's a long, long time. He's pretty much the only leader of a big elite law firm who was in situ during the financial crisis. There's a great arc actually of the evolution of the legal market through his kind of career, you know, 2008 to now. No one else has done that. So of course he was already thinking about stepping down and succession, but this was not a convenient way to go on any. No, and actually to your point, Matt, you know, if you were, you know, if someone was going to write a big narrative nonfiction book about big law, they would use Brad Carp as the thread, you know, the financial crisis, how he comes with this huge baggage of, you know, a firm doing big pro bono, but also balancing in sort of a Wall Street practice with that, the way that Paul Weiss is a firm pivot towards private capital and get Scott Barsheian. We're going to talk about Scott Barsheian in a major way that needs to be done. The deal with Trump and now this murky nexus of connections and the status obsession that big law has, which is why there are so many lawyers were sort of brought into that orbit of Epstein and the way that sort of favours were traded. I mean, all of that is, is ready made. I mean, you could say a screenplay, but actually it's quite a serious sort of a biographical narrative around you might say the degradation of big law actually. You sort of come onto the next topic there really kicks, we want to look at why is Brad Carp a big name? Why, we see that the top he's become a bit of a household name. How has he managed that? Well, I can tell you a little bit about that. I suppose the question is who is he. As I just said, he started running Paul Weiss all the way back in 2008 and he'd taken Paul Weiss through the financial crisis, through the COVID crisis and of course most controversially the Trump executive order crisis last year. So the odds are he wouldn't have stood again for a fifth term regardless of this story breaking. My sense is he already felt he'd done enough. He actually joined Paul Weiss as a summer associate and never left. Yeah, unusual nowadays. It's incredibly unusual. It doesn't really happen. Yeah, his Thai professional life was built inside a single firm. He was and is, you know, we're talking in the past tense. He's still around. He's still there, you know, and he's a big figure. So he's a star litigator. His client base is big, major financial institutions like JP Morgan and City and Morgan Stanley and of course Apollo, loads of others. He co-chaired the litigation department. He carved out this reputation as a top go-to strategic advisor for corporate boards. He's always been a really prominent writer and thinker. Again, quite unusual for this for this market, you know, he writes a, or he's right a monthly column on trends in litigation. Very deeply involved in public interest in civil liberties matters, frequently weighed in on national issues and very strong ties to the democratic political leadership including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. And also, it notes, but he was one of the very few big law firm leaders who still work full time by which I mean a ridiculous number of hours that he used to bail 3000 to something plus, you know, and that's always been the Paul Weiss model. Now that might change possibly, but Scott Barshe also has a god entry in practice and I would have guess is unlikely to want to shed very much of that. So yeah, so Brad Carp is a towering figure really. Yeah, and also he's very unusual with law firm leaders that he speaks like a human. You know, when you meet him actually speaks. It's really, it's fluent human. It's unbelievable. It's like, you know, there's humor, there is irony, there is, he's exactly the sort of person, frankly, that appeals to journalists because you can have a great old chat about not just about business, but the world and it's a very textured conversation. It's not, you know, the what Matt has sketched out is a very hard working life, but it's a hard working life in which I suppose he's aware of the sort of the bigger currents within the world and has interesting views and does isn't frightened. You know, he doesn't he doesn't power at this awful kind of no comment type line. He's just he's very, very engaging and he's interested in ideas and interested in give and take. So, so for a lot of journalists who have met him and I've spoken to a lot of others and you know, a couple of journalists in America who've who've talked about how, you know, how much they you enjoy your encounters with Brad Carp because he's an interesting person and he has a lot to offer. And, you know, for a lot of people, I think sort of seeing his his resignation, it's a sort of it's an odd step in his so called, you know, he hasn't really put a foot around Trump Trump is a different thing. He had to play a very difficult card, but of course what the Epstein email show is that, you know, you are required to have a certain amount of social skills in that role and those social skills, whereas the email show not always put to the best moral advantage. Yeah, he's he's utterly charming, you know, it has to be said and you know, possibly a bit more polarizing in recent years, simply because he had that start power, that recognition factor and most other big law firm leaders don't know, invisible, no one knows who they are. He was, it was say a little bit more about also what he's actually done, if I may, and his style because he was he was a consensus builder, he was a real fan of genuine partnership, although of course Paul Weiss just recently did introduce, you know, a second tier of partner. He was reluctant though, he was really reluctant to do that, yeah, he didn't want to do that, but it's done it because that's he's also a realist and, you know, that's the way it's gone for a long time, they didn't have English law in London, you know, and then until they did and of course when they did, bang, they exploded and that was that was down to Brad as well, you know, so he was a big fan of being able to get around a table and sort stuff out. There's still, even though they're huge, it's still around I think 80% or so of Paul Weiss' partners are based in Six Avenue, you know, in New York, that's where they are and they have these Thursday lunches every Thursday and they all get together and they'll dial in the guys for, you know, Neil and crew from New York, from London and they'll dial in and they're chatting, they're chatting about stuff, you know, so it's still not so huge that they can't do that, but I think the real measure of the extent of his impact and the extent of to which Paul Weiss is now an utterly different beast from the shop he inherited is, you know, back then 70, 75% of their litigation of their revenue was litigation related, probably more and it's on the cart that that started to change. I think I remember back in 2011, they did one of their first big strategic moves and that was opening up in Toronto and it was an M&A private equity play and it was like everyone's going, "What are they doing? What's going on? They're in litigation shop. Why are they doing that?" But it was, you know, it's part of a plan and of course another big thing was in, I think, 2016 when Barchet joined from Kraft, that was in the days when people did not leave Kraft and certainly people like Scott Barchet didn't leave Kraft, but it was huge. That was a seismic thing and it's only less than, was 10 years ago. Well, before we get on to Barchet and sort of the future of the firm under him, let's just ask, I mean, what impact will this have on Paul Weiss as a firm? I mean, in some ways they've had a real horrible 12 months because they had the Trump deal which was obviously very controversial as we've said, they've now got this, will this have an impact on the firm in its reputation and its clients? Not purely from a professional work perspective or through that lens with Brad Carp now gone from leadership, the mood I've picked up in, picked up on in states that it will basically have zero impact on Paul Weiss. Brands outlive individuals, that's just the way it is. And I think with the Trump settlement, definitely certain clients and lawyers really did react. They definitely withheld their work, some left, some move their business, some will have a view, some will be principled for sure, but others are just going to say, Brad Carp isn't the one I'm hiring, Dost has a funny way of settling, doesn't it? And once it does, I think most of Paul Weiss's clients will just shrug and say life goes on. And it's rather different from the Trump thing, you know, with Trump, there was a wider political issue around the ability of law firms to actually do work and the ability of clients to choose their advisors in the first place without having an executive order slapped on the advisors. With this, and again, we're going to say there is no alleged wrongdoing by on the part of Brad Carp at all. So there would be therefore no reason for any clients to take away work from him or from the law firms. Now obviously clients will have their own views about anyone who is by association tainted with Epstein. But I think that that question, I mean, it's definitely worth asking the question, but you know, New York's very transactional place anyway. I don't think it's, you know, I think I think Paul Weiss will be just fine. And one of the reasons it will be just fine is exactly because of this new phase that it's found itself in, with Scott Barsier and the ascension of Scott Barsier to the top job has been predicted by literally everybody for the last five years. And clientess, I even from the perspective of junior lawyers, I don't foresee a junior lawyer in London letting go of a training contract from Paul Weiss or in the US letting go of an associate roller poloist, they're definitely going to take it on. What do you foresee somebody for going to partnership with Paul Weiss? They're not going to do that. So it's not in any way comparable because these things never are, but a decade, over a decade ago, Bill Voguey, who was running Latham, stepped down. Again, no wrongdoing per se, but there were a bunch of emails that came out of about a personal relationship he was having outside of the firm, not some firm premises, etc, etc. He stepped down. He didn't want, it was clear that the firm didn't want him to be the story, etc. Very few people remember who Bill Voguey is now. At the time, it was the biggest scandal in big law. And so what about this Barsier bloke? For people in London who may have never heard of him or it's interesting in many ways. As you were saying earlier, Paul Weiss has moved from being the litigation shop to much more of a, well, a mixture, of course. or still big part litigation, but a lot of private equity. particularly in London. Basha, of course, is a transactional lawyer. What can we glean from this change of management? - If I can just leap in before Matt and Nikhil give the considered view, he is not just a lawyer. He's not just any transactional lawyer. He is the M&S of transactional lawyers. He is absolutely dog. He is a serious victim in corporate transactions. And that's anyone out there who doesn't, you know, isn't kind of a obey with the US legal scene. It's really important. - Do they have M&S in New York? - No, I don't know. And how would that explain the whole M&S ad branding, aren't we? - But it's interesting, is there a London parallel? Because there are Nils Hatchdev coming over. - No, I think his leader Shabasha, being leader is also reflective of where the legal market is today. And where Paul Weiss is today, it's reflective of that change. Like Matt, you said that Paul Weiss was what, three-fourths of the revenue was litigation back in 2008, when Brad Cup took over. Today, that's not the case. So Basha being the leader of the firm is reflective of that change as well. And famously, Basha was while at Krobat. Basha was pretty anti, not anti, but building out in London, which was of course a different proposition when he went over to Paul Weiss. And of course, he, along with Brad Cup, has seen Paul Weiss through the most aggressive leader to Kroats, most of it coming out of London. - Yeah, and I think there's a sort of his, again, it comes back to, you know, what are the individual's connections? And, you know, sort of you can build a huge business based on your leaders' individual connections, such that it's done it in London. You know, we all know that. In New York and in the US generally, Basha's entry, boardroom creds were huge and he personally managed to get some of some really big signature deals really early on when he left Krobat, which everyone was going. Everything will be judged on whether he can actually take these clients. Krobat is sort of, you know, this fortress, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, Basha has proved that you can transport these unbelievable institutional clients. Nick, he'll talk us through some of the clients that he has personally represented. - Yes, so he's clearly moved a set of clients from Krobat onto Paul Weiss. He's famously represented Chevron in their massive $55 billion acquisition of HESC Corporation. This was a massive energy sector deal. He's represented IBM. He's represented WWE on its merger with USC. And he's also represented GE in several deals of the years. - So, obviously he's quite a different type of lawyer to Brady Carp. Do you think that he will have a significantly different strategy than Carp has had? - I think the Paul Weiss strategy of building out and becoming a major power player in corporate transactions remains in place. And Basha is simply going to accelerate that. So, last week, Paul Weiss opened in Houston. Now, this is something that they pledged to do about two years ago and hadn't done it. And that shows that Houston's quite a hard market to open. I mean, everyone wants to get there at the moment. It's really vibrant Texas right now for lots and lots of reasons. And they have opened and they've opened with, well, with a team, but it's in Kirkland, it's a Coatland partner, and it is in corporate. So, they are going to be using corporate as a lever to get into very big, vibrant markets. So, that's all part of the same play. It's absolutely of a piece within. - No, and more importantly, I think you already started seeing shades of Scott Basha as far as Paul Weiss is concerned, simply because as we discussed earlier as well, that it was very unlikely that Brad Cuppers going to stand for the fifth term. It's very likely that a handle was already in place. So, there were shades of Scott Basha in the leadership and Houston opening being one of those, one of the ways that it's manifested. - They don't need to change that much. They'd already identified the New York London Corridor as an absolute sort of focus of investment. - And what about London? Because of course we've spoken so much about London here at the lawyer over the past few years with Paul Weiss and all they're doing there. And it seems like it's not really going to impact much. I mean, Neil Satchdev seems to be running that show rather than New York. - Yeah, I mean, Satchdev is, you know, it's very much sort of part of the close leadership team anyway and has, I mean, London has a very clear voice in New York. I mean, the very fact that Paul Weiss does not have mirrored offices means that London is obviously going to have a voice. I'm just waiting, you know, Kertland opened in Nashville last week and frankly, you know, that's almost more interesting. - You just want an excuse to go to Nashville, Ket, because you like the music there. - I do, I do love it. It's great. So we, we, we, we, heartening encourage all all firms to create Nashville as the most important alternative centres in New York so we can go and visit. - So Matt, you, I know that you've been talking to a lot of law firm leaders in the states about this and actually where, where they think this leaves Paul Weiss. What's, what's the general feeling from them? - I mean, it is, as we've said, that they put in place already they largely brand-carp the building blocks for a incredibly successful firm. And I don't think anybody for a second is thinking this, this signals, you know, the imminent demise of Paul Weiss or, or even a particularly notable downturn, you know, it's Varshe taking over. But there's question marks about that, you know, he's, is he style going to be different from Brad? Is it, is it, and how much is his, his, his own book of business going to be affected by it? Probably not much, you know, they'll find a way to do it. I think what they do, there is they have, you know, a reasonable team around the leader. The leader goes out and is, you know, the, the front of house, if you like, but isn't doing every bit of operational stuff, of course not. So I think you're gonna see a, you know, continuation, a continuation of investment in London as well, we've seen that quite recently. We'll see what their financials are as well, pretty soon for this, for this year, I'd imagine for 2025 they'll have had another really strong year, clearly, an unbelievably turbulent year, you know, the one they'll want to forget. But now I think the sense I've got from, from other law firm leaders is that, you know, nobody's particularly worried about Paul Weiss at the moment. Yeah, and I think there's sort of, I, I, I wonder if the thing that they may, might, might lose over time, is this sense of law as not just at the service of corporate clients. One of the things that Brad Carte was very good at articulating was that there was a wider issue around civil rights and so on. And actually the whole concept of law as underpinning political and civil, civic institutions, you know, in London, you go into their office and there's kind of, there's quotes from, from the founder of Paul Weiss, etched into the wall that talks about the sort of the, the noble, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but, you know, it's like, blottering and so on. So it's quite, it runs very deep at Paul Weiss. It has done some decades. I wonder whether that, that sense of Paul Weiss, sort of, you know, the mission, if you like, will actually dissipate. And my guess is that it probably will. It's interesting because I mean, obviously that was one of the things that made the whole Trump situation all the more stark because this firm had had those, those sorts of messages. But at the same time, it was, you know, I've spoken to litigators in New York who have suggested to me that, the, the move away from, not move away from litigation, but the re-emphasis on transactional work at Paul Weiss, had left them feeling somewhat out on the code. And, you know, traditionally, and please write to me at Christian.smithoftheloyer.com, if you don't agree with this. But traditionally, you know, litigators are the more sort of academic, principle rule of law types than the transactional lawyers. So as you move away from that, you inevitably lose that sort of love of the law for the law itself. So if that continues, then I think absolutely that will happen. Yeah. I mean, you know, we've done a podcast today about the effect of Epstein on Bragg Hop and Paul Weiss. Every person on this podcast, me, Christian, Matt and Nickyl, all agree that the Epstein's Daniel is not fundamentally about Bragg Hop and Paul Weiss. It's about a whole group of trafficked women at the end of the day. However, our job is of course to write and opine on the topic of big law and so far we have. So that is all we have time for this week. Thank you very much for listening. You can contact us at [email protected], but we'll be back again in a fortnight with another episode of The Lawyer Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Bye-bye. Goodbye.