Category: Metro

Brad Karp defends deal with US president as Skadden junior lawyer resigns in protest over D&I attack

The chair of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Paul Weiss) has defended the firm’s controversial agreement with US President Donald Trump, telling colleagues that the elite New York outfit was facing “an existential crisis” that could have led to its collapse.

In an internal email to colleagues sent on Sunday, Brad Karp said Trump’s executive order, which suspended Paul Weiss’ security clearances and barred the firm from federal buildings, “brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people and our clients”.

“Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis,” Karp wrote. “The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm.”

Once home to Mark Pomerantz, the prosecutor who previously investigated Trump’s finances, the firm agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services and disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in hiring decisions.

Karp said Paul Weiss had initially prepared to fight the order in court, but opted to negotiate after it became clear the firm was already losing business. “Without the deal, it was very likely we would not have been able to survive a drawn-out dispute,” he said, adding that rival firms had already begun approaching Paul, Weiss clients in the wake of the order.

While the White House celebrated the agreement as a “remarkable change of course”, Karp pushed back against claims that the administration was now dictating the firm’s pro bono docket. The agreed matters, he insisted, were “areas of shared interest”.

Karp, who was a known fundraiser for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, said his actions were guided by fiduciary duty. “There was no right answer to the predicament in which we found ourselves,” he told staff. “But no one in the wider world can appreciate how stressful it is to confront an executive order like this until one is directed at you.”

The fallout from the Trump administration’s crackdown on the legal industry is being felt across the profession. One of the authors of an open letter signed by thousands of junior lawyers denouncing the administration’s “intimidation tactics” has now resigned from her job at Skadden.

Rachel Cohen, the associate who coordinated the letter, posted on LinkedIn: “I’ve spent thirty years working to get into these spaces. I do not give them up lightly, and I have made plenty of moral compromises before. But this moment is existential.”

She continued: “If being on this career path demands I accept that my industry — because this is certainly not unique to Skadden — will allow an authoritarian government to ignore the courts, I refuse to take it any further.”

Cohen described submitting a conditional resignation firm-wide, anticipating the news would leak. She concluded, “I’m going to go cry and watch the new White Lotus, but rest assured I will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.”

A dozen more law firms are expected to be targeted in new executive orders, according to a White House official. Perkins Coie continues to challenge its order in court, while other firms including Covington & Burling have reportedly been placed under review.

How to become a KC, courtesy of soon-to-be KC Ruth Hughes

So, you’ve seen that someone from 2015 call is becoming a KC. You’ve decided to take the plunge—either now or some years down the road. 2025 applications are open and the closing date is 25 April 2025 at 5pm.

What might be helpful is this: the unauthorised guide to taking silk.

Please note this guide is written from a chancery perspective, if you want a guide from a criminal perspective, get someone to write one while they are awaiting the jury’s verdict.

What should I do first?

See if Ede & Ravenscroft stock Harry Potter time-turners. It would have been ideal if you had thought about silk earlier in your career. Much earlier. At least five years ago. More on this later…

And the second thing?

Scrutinise the form (and the lengthy guidance). Like “read the question!”, this advice doesn’t date. Things have moved on since Lord Neuberger (allegedly) took silk without knowing he’d applied, thanks to his senior clerk. The form is long and detailed and you will want to spend at least two working weeks and maybe more on it.

There are five competency areas:

A) Understanding and using the law
B) Advocacy (written and oral)
C) Working with others (aka leadership)
D) Diversity Action and Understanding (aka E & D, still considered a plus on this side of the pond)
E) Integrity (or realistically lack thereof)

Excellence is what is being sought. Silk is a kitemark of excellent advocacy.

Cases…

This is where thinking about silk early would be helpful — you’ll need to have accumulated 12 substantial cases over the last three years which will be foundation of evidence to apply. You basically want to demonstrate you already have a silk’s practice (even before getting the letters after your name).

KCA (King’s Counsel Appointments) say that cases should not be “run of the mill”, but rather to have important consequences, precedential value, or present novel or unforeseen complexity. There should have been professional challenge.

The requirement for a bedrock of cases which meet the mark is what makes the application years in planning.

Some people do take silk with fewer cases, e.g. if one case was part of the Lehman Brothers litigation, so don’t let the number put you off entirely, but there is no getting away from it. You really do have to be ready with a bunch of recent ‘big’ cases of which you feel some pride, and where the assessors, principally judges, will be willing in good conscience to report that your advocacy was stellar.

If you’re looking at an application in the next three years, I suggest building a spreadsheet that exactly mirrors the competency matrix. When you think you might use a case for silk, fill out the spreadsheet noting exactly what you did against each item in the matrix. This will help in the future because it is difficult to remember three years on why exactly your cross was so great.

Save your written advocacy and your notes for cross examination and closing in a file, too. You can label this file “silk” or if you think someone might read that over your shoulder in chambers then you can mark it “CPD” or something else equivalently anodyne.

You can do this also do this with new cases that haven’t made it on to the form yet if you are applying this year because if you are invited to interview it will be helpful to have some recent examples to supplement the form you have put it. This is good because it gives the flavour that you are already practising at a silk level.

Think about an application consultant

A consultant is here to help you through the process, for a fee. You’re busy — you already have a silk’s practice. So, for example, if you are a consultant reading this, it would be useful if you could provide a spreadsheet similar to the one I’ve described above.

Do you need a consultant, though? Views differ on this one. KCA say no. Everyone — yes, everyone — else I spoke to (including more than 15 silks, mainly practicing in chancery or tax, and many recently appointed) said yes, you do need a consultant.

A good time to approach the consultant is three months before the application deadline.

Note that consultants can be expensive. I encountered people who had used more than one, but there you risk getting conflicting advice. I wouldn’t have enjoyed that.
So, I was originally sceptical about the need for a consultant, but came round to the idea. The reasons why you might want to pay up are:

1. They have experience. Consulting aspirant KCs comprises their job. They can be more honest/brutal than fellow members of chambers;
2. The complete process takes a huge amount of time. You don’t want to do it more than once if you can avoid it;
3. Regrets. You wouldn’t want to not get silk and look back and think, “if only I had used a consultant”;
4. Consultants understand the STAR system well. You probably don’t, unless you were a recruitment consultant in a previous life;
5. They will give you a mock interview, which you do need.

Looking on the bright side, this cost is wholly and exclusively for the purpose of your profession — and as such, is tax deductible.

STAR? What is this STAR nonsense? I dropped science after GSCEs to focus on useful subjects like History and French. Now we have to do astrophysics! isn’t what I signed up for…

KCA employ an evidence-based appointment model. You have to provide evidence of excellence in the competencies.

If the only jobs you had before coming to the bar were like me (a) sales assistant in the local museum and (b) night paralegal (bar school didn’t pay for itself, although the pupillage award drawdown was helpful) then this model may present itself as a mystery.

Ruth Hughes will be appointed KC on 24 March 2025. She practises at 5 Stone Buildings, specialising in trusts and estates, mental capacity, tax and fraud. Ruth once represented 22 highly endangered Chinese tigers in a divorce. Sort of. One of them was called Tiger Woods. She has cross-examined on the closing of the contracts on Avatar and litigated about the capital gains tax on a Turner painting. She helped obtain Proceeds of Crime Act final restraining orders against Baroness Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman. She has acted for many well-known figures lacking mental capacity. She can’t tell you who though. She can be contacted at clerks@5sblaw.com

Rapper will join ex-Supreme Justice Lady Arden

The University of Cambridge has announced its nominees for honorary degrees, with rapper Stormzy and former Supreme Court Justice Lady Arden both set to receive honorary doctorates in law.

Cambridge will become the second university to award Stormzy an honorary doctorate, this time in law (LLD), for his philanthropy and impact in fields like education, music, sport, and literature.

In 2018, Stormzy launched his Stormzy Scholarship in collaboration with Cambridge, funding the tuition and maintenance for two Black British students per year. Three years later, HSBC joined the #Merky Foundation to help support ten further scholars.

One of the first two scholars from 2018, Drew Chateau, graduated with an LLB in 2021. She completed her training at Clifford Chance, including a secondment in the Tokyo office, and is now a newly qualified associate at the City firm.

Speaking back in 2023, Chateau explained how the scholarship “helped reduce the gap” between herself and those for a more “stable upbringing”.

Fifty-five students have now been supported by a Stormzy Scholarship, with 2025 set to see the largest graduating cohort to date. Cambridge also highlighted the “Stormzy effect” in encouraging more Black students from across the UK to apply to the university.

Stormzy, the stage name of Michael Omari Owuo Junior, is among eight individuals set to receive an honorary doctorate from Cambridge, three of which will be LLDs. He will share the stage with former Supreme Court judge Lady Arden, while Olympian and UK Sport chair Dame Katherine Grainger will also receive an LLD.

In 2022, the University of Exeter awarded the musician his first honorary degree — a Doctor of Letters (DLitt). The honour recognised Stormzy’s efforts in promoting education and tackling racial inequality, with the university highlighting his publishing imprint, #Merky Books, and his Cambridge scholarship.