I know consequences are hard to come by lately, and the prevailing wisdom on here is that nothing is going to change as a result of Brad Karp's chummy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Without engaging in overly rosy thinking, I think this will ultimately be a really big deal for the long term survival of Paul Weiss as a V10 firm, if not as its own independent firm, period.
All of this is based on the reality that big law firms are less corporations and more amorphous blobs of independent business units. Which is common knowledge. Any partner with any profitable book of business is constantly being assailed by head hunters dangling huge amounts of money for them to jump ship. One can only imagine how the pace has picked up for PW partners since this weekend's news broke.
But why would the Karp emails make someone jump ship if they haven't already? Because at a certain point if you can make the same or even more money at another firm, with all of the same comforts and benefits but none of the reputational stink of being the Epstein Firm, you'll take that option eventually. Remember also that these are just the emails we have so far. Likely more will come out, and it's possible the firm itself will be more deeply implicated. The firm name might not be radioactively toxic now, but who wants to wait around for it to potentially be in a few weeks or months?
What it comes down to is: why would anyone choose Paul Weiss if they have another equally good option? Same goes for associates. If it's Paul Weiss or nowhere, then sure, they'll get people. But the very best candidates, the one Paul Weiss prizes itself on getting, have options. And it's a harder sell to get those candidates on board when they could save themselves the headache by going somewhere else, especially if it's somewhere that has some moral credibility left (which some of the best candidates do care about).
Finally, though this is not exactly on topic, the litigation department has absolutely suffered in the past year. The DC office is hollowed out, most of their best partners and associates jumped ship for Dunn Isaacson Rhee. According to people I know there, they've lost Uber and now Exxon as clients (which is hilarious given that the Exxon representation was their first huge PR disaster). The pro bono is a shell of what it once was. White collar stuff seems fine for now but that's an extremely competitive space as well. Maybe the financials are still fine, it's impossible to know, but the changes are real.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my ramblings.