Big Law Firm Paul Weiss Caved to Trump's Bogus Order in 4 Days. It Was Cowardly and Inexcusable.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:57 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1143. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:01:03 Matt: Well, I'm a lawyer in America in 2025, so I'm feeling a little vulnerable right now for reasons we're going to have to talk about.

0:01:10 Thomas: An endangered species, practically.

0:01:11 Matt: Who will speak for the lawyers is what we're asking today.

0:01:13 Thomas: And you know what? Liz is here too. Normally we make people wait while we do an intro awkwardly, but Liz is in the intro status of relationship, I think. We're at that. I put that on my Facebook anyway.

0:01:26 Matt: Signal Group chat for sure. Yeah.

0:01:28 Thomas: Yeah, that's not saying much.

0:01:29 Liz: My goodness.

0:01:30 Thomas: Everybody's in the signal group chat.

0:01:30 Liz: My God. I know. I mean, remember the it's complicated Facebook relationship status? Yeah. You guys for having me. Have It to say I have never been so excited to do an episode of OA. I have so many thoughts here. I am so disappointed in a certain law firm and this is really, really important and it's really scary. So I look forward to talking about it, laughing about it and about it.

0:01:58 Matt: Well, I'm really glad that we have a New York insider because I'm up here in Boston where we don't talk about this stuff. So at least I'm not in Big Law. I have no connection to Big Law, and I just want to remind everybody that Liz actually did spend a few years in the trenches or whatever you call them. I don't know. Are the mines, the Big Law mines?

0:02:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:12 Liz: Windowless office without leaving it. Yeah. Did do that for five and a half years. I did work in Bigelow for five enough years. And yeah, I mean this is the other thing just to set the scene. I mean This is the talk of the town like it's my all of my LinkedIn tons of posts about this all my friends who are lawyers Everyone is talking about this because it's really really scary.

0:02:32 Matt: Well, great. We've got a lot to talk about. Let's get to it.

0:02:34 Thomas: Well, I don't know who would be friends with lawyers. That's kind of weird. But other than that, yeah, I hear you. No, I'm just kidding.

0:02:38 Liz: I know I agree with

0:02:40 Thomas: Yeah, this is scary, and it's...

0:02:40 Liz: You on that Only lawyers.

0:02:44 Thomas: And nobody's crying about bajillion dollar high powered law firms, but this is an incredible attack, it feels to me. And it's something that does have consequences, I know, more I even know how to think about. So that's why I'm so excited to have you and Matt to break it down for us. But we're going to take our usual break. If you want to support the show, go to patreon .com slash law. Pledge as little as a dollar and you get rid of the ads and you support us. To those who make this show happen. I also want to say new Gavel Gavel's coming out, like probably already out right now as you're listening. We had a lawyer who's covering. A Blake Lively thing, MJ uh, Morley. Covers it on, you know, Instagram and some other apps. I don't really understand that Olivia could probably tell me about, but somewhere she covers it and is very good and very popular. And we had her on to talk about the legal components of the Stephanie Jones part of the lawsuit, which is really fascinating and underrated part of it. So make sure to check out gavel gavel and that's public. Everybody gets that. Glad to be doing that. All right, we'll take our break and then we'll get into it.

0:03:43 Matt: So we are gathered here today because the Trump administration has issued a flurry, a blizzard of executive orders having to do with lawyers in the last few weeks and specifically targeting, this is completely unprecedented, of course, the president specifically targeting not only specific law firms, but specific lawyers by name and calling them out as enemies of the state, basically. And he's imposing a number of sanctions on them. And these different firms have responded different ways. Of the recent history here and how these firms are responding.

0:04:10 Thomas: How often do executive orders name like a guy? That's got to be rare.

0:04:14 Matt: Scary. It's scary, to be honest. I

0:04:17 Liz: I mean never, never, almost never, or almost never naming a law firm. Um, when the Covington order first came out, I texted someone at Covingdon. I immediately, because it was so astonishing that, Covingden that would be the subject of an executive order.

0:04:34 Matt: The I can think of is like a war criminal where we're putting sanctions on specific war criminals or something. That's the level we're at here.

0:04:39 Thomas: And lawyers are war criminals, but not,

0:04:41 Matt: Well, that's true. Many of us. It's very true. All started off on the 25th of February when this executive order suspended security clearances and ordered an evaluation of government contracts for Covington and Burlington, was not as bad as what it was going to become with some of these other orders, but this is still pretty concerning. You're suspending all active security clearancers, which doing business with the government. So you can't even go into some government buildings. The reason that they're being targeted is because they assisted Jack Smith during his time as special counsel. That's specifically why they're targeted. That's awful.

0:04:41 Thomas: You know. Did they have those? What are those for? Oh, okay.

0:05:14 Liz: A little narrower than that, actually. And it's interesting because it gets a bit bigger, is that they suspend the clearance for Pete Koski. And he's the person who assisted Jack Smith, pro a bono, and anyone who was on Peter Koski's team, basically. So it's not everyone at Covington and Burling. Kind of subset of people. This obviously changes. Other thing, just to add a little color for this, clearance stuff isn't that big of a deal in some respects, if you're just looking at it kind of narrowly. Know, Covington and Burling doesn't really have a government contracts business. That's not a thing they do. Few big law firms are really engaging in government contracts. Like, not getting paid directly by the federal government to be doing some sort of contract, but they may be working with a client who is, for example, Boeing. Boeing is negotiating a contract with DOD and they're representing Boeing in that process.

0:06:04 Thomas: They're like negotiating, like, I'm going to slide a piece of paper that has how many planes we're going to allow to crash next year because our planes suck.

0:06:12 Liz: Exactly. Exactly. And the thing is with, with the original Covington order, know, they, Trump just says in it, okay, I'm directing all my agencies to review their contracts with Covingdon. None of them have any contracts with, but Covingden, but Covingdan is not getting paid by any, uh, by any federal government agency. But obviously this kind of besmirches Covingtan.

0:06:30 Liz: And if you are a client of Covingtin, Trying to get business from the administration, trying to get big government contracts. You don't want to be a client of them anymore.

0:06:40 Thomas: The tort of besmirchment.

0:06:42 Matt: You're right. Right. This is specifically because they provided pro bono legal services to Jack Smith. He had to disclose he received about $140 ,000 worth. So that was the real crime here was that he wasn't even getting paid to do this.

0:06:53 Thomas: That's interesting. Why was it pro bono?

0:06:55 Matt: Mean, I'd help Jack Smith pro boni myself, but I don't know. Don't know enough about what they were doing. But so this was concerning and we'd never seen anything quite like this before. This is a direct political retaliation against a law firm that was doing something to prosecute the president, to assist in any way in prosecuting the man who's not the president. So this is clearly tit for tat, just retaliatory. Then we go on to March 6th when we have Perkins Coie. I understand it's Coie, not Coie and That's easy to remember. Their major crime against the United States was that they worked for the Clinton campaign and hired the people who put together the infamous Steele dossier.

0:07:17 Liz: Correct. With gooey. Story.

0:07:27 Thomas: Right, I do remember that.

0:07:29 Matt: Also, they do a lot of DEI, which is a big part of all of this. They're coming after law firms doing DEI for reasons we're going to talk about.

0:07:35 Thomas: Really? How many black partners do they have?

0:07:37 Matt: Question, actually.

0:07:38 Thomas: Zero, probably. The stats are really bad on that. Okay, I could be wrong. But broadly speaking, like big law, the stats are horrible on that, yeah.

0:07:46 Liz: Agreed.

0:07:47 Matt: So that order was Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLC. And it says, the dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins -Coie LLP has affected this country for decades. What he means is affected me, Donald Trump, for decades, yeah, yeah.

0:07:59 Thomas: What? Okay.

0:08:01 Matt: And what's funny too is when he's saying decades, but then it says notably in 2016, which was not quite a decade ago. I'm not that good at math, but yeah, right, right.

0:08:06 Thomas: Little resume bolstering there, like rounding up. Nearly a decade.

0:08:12 Matt: Right.

0:08:06 Liz: It's also totally Orwellian sounding, too, in all of the language in these.

0:08:16 Matt: Yeah. Oh, it's awful. Working with activist donors, including George Soros, you've got to bring him into this. I mean, this is some of the fascist stuff they've done. I'm waking up every day and saying, once again, this the fascists' goddamn thing I've ever seen. Every morning I see I'm seeing something else. Thing with security clearance reviews and contracts and everything else. Perkins Coie's response to this was better than other firms we're going to talk about.

0:08:35 Liz: So So Perkins Coie comes in here and pretty immediately, as a law firm should do, dedicated to upholding the law that itself is subject to an unjust decision, unjust executive order, they start litigating it. So they go into the D .C. Circuit and file in D .D. District Court a motion to enjoin this order. And when I say they. Hire Williams and Connolly, which is to the extent that I have a crush on a law firm, which I don't, is the law firm I have apparently, according to media reports, they looked into maybe hiring Quinn Emanuel. Quinn Emanuele, we all know from representing Eric Adams, among other people. Emenuele rebuffs them, says, we're not going to litigate this, probably because Quinn Emelele has gotten really trumpy.

0:09:20 Matt: Cowards.

0:09:21 Liz: They go over to Williams Connolly. Williams Connally is this just. Great DC -based law firm, fantastic lawyers. And one of the things I personally really like about them is they're just really dedicated to defense work to the point that they have very few or almost no former government prosecutors. I've heard that as a matter of policy, they almost never hire former government prosecutors. So they're the real exception to the revolving door.

0:09:44 Matt: That's unusual.

0:09:45 Thomas: I see why you don't officially have a crush on them.

0:09:49 Matt: Although, by the end of this conversation, I'm going to have you tell us which ones you want to marry or kill.

0:09:53 Thomas: Ah, well, and I was going to say, like, it's not in of law firms and speaking, lawyers are quite risk averse. And, you know, defending Perkins Coie is kind of like putting yourself out there a little bit, you Know, because you're already seeing that the thing they're defending them against is the president of the United States targeting them. So like that's not a entirely without risk decision. So I do appreciate that.

0:10:17 Matt: That's awesome. Judge Beryl Howell, you might remember, of course, from all the January 6th cases, specifically thanked them on the record for doing this service. Knows what things are going here. So I think we all agree this is the way to respond when the president personally targets you is to hire good lawyers and fight back.

0:10:31 Liz: Particularly if you're a law firm.

0:10:34 Matt: Yes. It's supposed to be the thing you're doing all day.

0:10:37 Thomas: Even a law firm doesn't have themselves as a client, you know, like they'll, even they will.

0:10:40 Matt: They know better. No fools here.

0:10:41 Liz: It really is. And just to put a sense of timeline on this. So, you signs the executive order for Perkins Coie on March 6th and by March 11th that filed their complaint and their motion for a TRO, a temporary restraining order to prevent the enforcement.

0:10:57 Matt: By the next day, they've got one from Judge Howell. So this is, again, this is what I would expect. This is a healthy, normal way to respond to a very unhealthy and fascist imposition on your practice. Directly retaliatory. So of course, this is March 6th. Now we come to March 14th from Paul Weiss. And this is one of the main things we want to talk about today. In a similar title, we've got an executive order entitled Addressing Risks from Paul Wiss, which again, super flashy just to start with. Law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and the destruction of bedrock American principles. Now I can't disagree with that.

0:11:33 Matt: Sorry, Liz, but... Yeah. I mean, look, I'm going to just say this up front. This is a very interesting conversation to have because I'm just going to embarrass Liz for a minute. I think it's incredibly awesome that you went from big law to doing what you're doing right now as a public defender.

0:11:45 Thomas: A very small law.

0:11:47 Matt: New York City, exactly.

0:11:47 Thomas: Incredibly small.

0:11:48 Matt: That is an unusual transition. Most people don't do that because you get used to the money and whatever else you're doing. And I think it's awesome. It's one of the many reasons I like you. But I am a small law guy. I'm a small all the way. I've only practiced small law. I have no idea what guys are doing in those big firms. I know they think we're idiots. I don't know what they're doing, but this is very interesting to me to see this perspective of the president going after these firms, doing things that I don' really understand. And a lot of the time, honestly, are kind of evil. Question. Weiss itself has a pretty honorable history. It goes back quite a ways. And I remember just the name because Lloyd Garrison, the civil rights hero, was a partner at one point, as seen recently in the movie Oppenheimer in the very long end of the movie there of the administrative hearing. His main lawyer was Lloyd Garrisson, but also did a whole bunch of other stuff for civil rights along with that. And if I'm not wrong, I think Paul Weis was one of the first or maybe the first firm to hire a woman as an associate or a partner. And same with a Black man, I think, too, in New York City.

0:12:37 Thomas: That was in 1985. No, I'm just kidding. Embarrassingly late.

0:12:41 Liz: Was actually, it was last year.

0:12:42 Thomas: Probably. Yeah, relatively

0:12:43 Liz: That's crazy. It's really awkward for everyone. That is why I love Pink Long. I

0:12:44 Matt: But yeah. Mean, this is not the kind of firm, and I know they've also done a bunch of other stuff because they're a giant law firm and they've done evil things too, but this is a fairly progressive history in terms of the kind firm that you'd expect, right, relatively speaking. But their crimes included employing Robert Mueller at one point. Sued January 6thers on of DC pro bono. They helped out the DC AG on that. Employed Mark Pomerantz after he left the Manhattan DA's office. Of course, also doing which is the real crime for most of these firms as well. Yeah. So Paul Weiss is targeted in this thing just the same as everybody else, and they have a different response. Liz, of course, is our Manhattan fancy New York City insider. What is going on over at Paul WeISS?

0:12:57 Thomas: Speaking. Sure. Yeah

0:13:26 Liz: I have a lot to say. So first I think that Matt gave a fantastic introduction of what Paul Weiss likes to claim that they are sort of their values are. They put very upfront on their website.

0:13:38 Thomas: Sorry. Is Paul Weiss not just a dude?

0:13:40 Matt: It's Paul comma Weiss. They're two different partners. Yes.

0:13:43 Thomas: My God. This whole time

0:13:45 Matt: It's a Paul

0:13:45 Thomas: I thought you were talking about a guy. No, I'm joking.

0:13:47 Matt: Weissen, Rifkin and Garrison is the official name of the firm here.

0:13:49 Thomas: Well, that was needlessly confusing.

0:13:51 Liz: Well, let I this image of themselves being highly progressive, taking on big causes. They were the firm. Roberta Kaplan was there. She's the attorney who sued many, many times. She was there and litigated Windsor. That was one of their big pro bono cases, which is gay marriage rights. Just always been really progressive, very strongly aligned with the Democratic Party in terms of how they give donations. It is not. Conservative firm. Um, and I would just, I'll note even Brad Karp, gave you a lot of money to Kamala, uh, the head of the litigation department, Karen Dunn, she helped prepare Kamala for the debates. Who are they otherwise also? They are, I don't know the exact AMLOL ranking or whatever, but you know they're routinely a top five firm, uh of rankings or top ten. Partners there making like over $7 million each, or that's kind of the average. They made $2 .6 billion last year. And historically, they have been a litigation firm. Historically, they've been considered, maybe you the best litigation firm in New York. Recently, in the last several years, they their corporate practice. So they've been making big efforts to get big deal, heavy hitter corporate The other thing to know about Paul Weiss is an individual called Brad Karp. I do not know many names of chairpeople of law firms. It's just not like, of

0:15:22 Thomas: Didn't even know they had chair people. What is that?

0:15:25 Liz: What is that? He's been in charge of the law firm. Karp has been in of Paul Weiss for almost 20 years. He's like 65 now. He has been charge of it since he was 48. Okay. Is sort of this like tremendous figure in the New York legal world. Knew someone at Weis Paul who told me, a people noted that he would do between two and three client meetings a day over meals. This person joked that they had no idea how he wasn't 500 pounds because he was constantly going out to meet clients, just the work. Huge, huge. I mean, he's Mr. Paul Weiss. This has dedicated his life to this firm, to the growth of this firm. And he will become the protagonist in the story that we are about to tell.

0:16:07 Matt: Necessarily the hero, but the protagonist.

0:16:10 Liz: The protagonist. So what happens with Paul Weiss is the sort of EO, basically almost carbon copy language as the one that Perkins, Cooey is subject to, gets issued as to Paul WeISS on March 14th. The entire law firm starts to go into tailspin. The one -week period between March 14th and March 21st, Paul Weiss, the greatest litigation firm in America, capitulates, collapses, bends knee, and does not fight this at all, and instead enters into an agreement with the Trump administration in for them to withdraw this EO. It is so astonishing and so disgusting to me. And I will say, I remember when Paul Weiss was targeted on March 14th. I remember seeing the news about it. And maybe this is a really good development because they are such a good law firm and they are so prestigious and they you were literally a law firm, one of the best ones. Like, this is it. This is your moment. And I just know, I mean, it's, that I, I've spoken to that I have spoken to people associated with them and former current appointments, everyone is disillusioned, horrified, angry, you that someone I know made is that, you know, we're not bankers like we're lawyers. We are supposed we have an ethical duty to uphold the law. And we were subject to a completely illegal presidential order that we knew that Perkins Coie was fighting and fighting successfully.

0:17:07 Thomas: They can fight it. Yeah.

0:17:47 Liz: And I think it's even worth further breaking out the timeline. So, you Karp consults with Quinn Emanuel, but he personally flies to Washington on March 18th. How does he fly there, you ask? By private jet. So this is, you know, I was thinking about this quite a lot. And watches White Lotus, there's this moment in White Lotus in the last episode where our favorite character, Ms. Ratliff, is explaining to her husband, Mrs. don't think at this age I'm meant to live an uncomfortable life. And Brad Karp can't even take an Acela. From New York to DC. He flies private.

0:18:21 Matt: Parker Posey.

0:18:28 Thomas: That's so good. A what? Sorry, I don't know what that is.

0:18:36 Liz: And a Cella train, that's the high -speed rail.

0:18:40 Matt: So true. Legend in high school, for sure. It is a little faster, but yeah.

0:18:42 Liz: You it's it's a high speed rail. It's not bad. But I will tell you, the Acela from New York to D .C. is like a social event, because when I used to be in big law, you'd run into all these people that were like having government meetings and stuff like that. But he just can't even like this is like how unwilling these people are to make themselves uncomfortable or potentially lose any business or have a moment of. Of dissatisfaction with the administration is four days later, he hops on a private jet, has a meeting, just him, and then a bunch of people from Trump's side and hammers out this agreement. And And then that agreement goes live basically on the 21st of March to the surprise of everyone.

0:19:17 Matt: The White House posts an EO that says, addressing remedial action. Remedial action as if they are in detention, and we've worked out a deal to get them out of detention. It's so disgusting. And so then to put this over them, that they've addressed certain issues and that they'll engage in a remarkable change of course.

0:19:34 Thomas: Yeah, what's the agreement? What about that?

0:19:36 Liz: So here's the agreement. The agreement has a few different parts to it. First part of the agreement, or I mean, one of the first parts of the is Paul Weiss is going to agree to do $40 million of presidentially selected or sponsored pro bono projects.

0:19:56 Thomas: Unbelievable. Like, already this feels like, I'm the president, I wrote on a piece of paper, fuck now pay me $40 million to unwrite that. Like is that what we're talking about here?

0:20:07 Matt: Yeah.

0:20:07 Liz: Not exactly that, but it's a little vague. So what Paul Weiss said they would do, and this is from the EO, it says, they would dedicate themselves to $40 million in legal services during Trump's term to support causes, including assisting our nation's veterans, fairness in the justice system, and combating anti -Semitism and other similar initiatives. You can't not read this cynically, okay? This is President Trump. Nonprofits that he likes and saying, Paul Weiss, I want you to do their incorporation documents. I mean, that's how I would read it.

0:20:43 Thomas: Even think Trump would do that noble of a thing. He doesn't. I'm more cynical on it than that.

0:20:46 Matt: Mean, the they're putting this out there, these executive orders are fairness in the justice system by going after lawyers. And antisemitism at this point, we all want to fight antisemitism, but their idea of that is Mahmoud Khalil, right? And going after students, right. So I mean you can't trust any of this, obviously, as you said. You have to be as cynical as possible.

0:20:58 Thomas: Deporting students. Yeah, right.

0:21:01 Liz: You can't trust any of this. You have to be exactly. And, you know, what does $40 million in pro bono mean? It means Paul Weiss, who bills at a not bargain rate. If you are a billing $2 ,000 an hour, you, calling pro bono, you know, you're billing and you bill an hour, that's $2 ,000 toward their $40 million debt, supposedly. Know, I saw an article that said that, oh, this is a drop in the bucket because Paul Weiss does $200 million of pro bonо annually. I was like, that is like a fifth of their annual pro bonó. It's a massive law firm. So it's not.

0:21:32 Matt: For Trump.

0:21:40 Liz: I did tons of pro bono when I was in big law. Lots of people do tons of no one. There was no external third party directing me how to do pro bonо and what causes to do it.

0:21:50 Thomas: Yeah, that's, this is crazy.

0:21:52 Matt: Right. And according to this order, they're going to be representing the full political spectrum in their ideology and their hiring and how they do pro bono. Of hiring, I guess we should talk about the other part of this, which I...

0:22:00 Thomas: That just means MAGA.

0:22:02 Matt: Yeah.

0:22:02 Thomas: There's no, that doesn't.

0:22:03 Matt: Oh, sure. Of course. The full spectrum of MAGA. So this, to me, obviously all of this is terrible, but the idea that the President of the United States is now dictating the hiring policies, especially if you're eliminating DEI hiring policies in a firm that has historically been very good at DEI -hiring policies. To me, is scary for a number of reasons, not just because of the obvious that we're encouraging racism and we're going to get more straight white male attorneys back to the norm that Trump wants. Right. More of those. I'm speaking as one. We also were talking about. Losing actual viewpoint diversity and diversity in firms of the kind that generates the desire to do the things like fighting the government and doing pro bono work and actually caring about social justice and causes. You're completely changing the fundamental approach of a law firm over a generation. They're doing this to all of these, right? They're forcing this. And I response, which we'll talk about, he says something like, we haven't committed anything except following the law and our hiring practices. And that just, I doubt that's what they agreed to, at least according to this order.

0:22:25 Thomas: That's what we need.

0:22:56 Liz: Lot of things to say there, too, some of which I'll reserve for a later rant further of this DEI, the sort of no, we're never going to do DEI. We promise we'll never do DEIs ever again, is they're apparently agreeing, and I cannot believe they did this, to allowing an outside auditor to come in and do that, which is...

0:23:14 Thomas: And check how white everyone is.

0:23:16 Liz: Which is so unbelievably invasive. That means, I mean, how I would imagine that is looking at everyone's applications, their GPAs, their scores, their interviews. This is such an invasive. Audit of a law firm. I mean, that's insane to me that a lawfirm would agree to that extent of an outside audit. If I were, oh, I don't know a law firm, I would advise a law not to do that. Know, you'd think. So another component of it.

0:23:45 Thomas: Is insane.

0:23:46 Liz: Insane.

0:23:47 Thomas: And we know how works. This This will mean anyone white male, they don't look at. Anyone else will have to justify their entire existence. You know, like that's just so. I can't even believe this is happening.

0:24:00 Liz: And the other kind of part of my rant here, and here's the sort of cynical version. I agree with everything you guys are saying, but also I think what was revealed by this is that Paul Weiss isn't what it claimed to be. And it's not hard to look at Paul WeISS or to talk to people who used to be at Paul less of a veneer than what we think it was. So there's been a bunch of interesting articles about this case, but the is there was a New York Times article that came ago that did a real deep dive in terms of the inner workings of Paul Weiss and who said what and who did what. What that article said was effectively, our protagonist is Brad Karp, chairman the of the firm. But the other person that came up repeatedly in that article is someone named Scott Barchet. Scott Barshet is a massive M &A partner who was lured over to Paul Weiss in 2016 with lots and lots of money. What this article more or less says, and I wonder if Brad tried to get this article put out himself, but this says that it was actually all of the litigators in Paul Weiss wanted to fight, but the entire corporate group said, no, no. We're going to lose all of our clients. And other firms were potentially going to be trying to poach some of these partners, their clients, and so on, so on. And that that is sort of like one of these sort of narratives that's coming out is that it's this sort of divide within the firm. But one of the things that's really striking in that article is it talks about how Brad Karp assembles this small group of people in order to kind of make this decision, you know, in this limited period of time that they have to make this

0:25:47 Liz: And it's, you know, the person who's like the head of restructuring. It's Barshay's. Every single one of those people in the small group that's listed in the New York Times as the person whom Radcarp is talking to, they're all white men. Paul Weiss is not as diverse as wants to be or as it ever claimed. This was all kind of a sham. I've spoken to people who had some experiences there as women. So it is sort of almost fitting that they caved exactly as quickly as they did.

0:26:14 Matt: Know, Brown v. Board was 71 years ago, and that's one of their other big feathers. I forgot to mention that before. I don't know if Thurgood Marshall was working there, but I think they helped him pro bono, and they took some credit for Brown v Board at some point. Does say a lot. I was also wondering too, when you mentioned that about other firms maybe stealing partners or clients, if there's some truth to that, and there might be, that says something about the state of the profession too, doesn't it? That people would descend like the the sharks.

0:26:36 Liz: Does. Think that's right. And it does. And they sort of named some of the usual suspects in that they threw out Kirkland, for example. But find that to be the speed at which this happened is so fast that you sort of these fears and, oh, we're going to lose our clients in this. It's like you guys couldn't handle being uncomfortable for four days. Days.

0:27:00 Thomas: Episode is brought to you by Quince and can't believe it, but it's already nearly vacation season. I don't know what that is, but I'm told that people who have normal jobs take a bunch of vacations. You know, that's not true, actually, because now that the kids are in school, we are taking a trip centered around their spring break, which is sometime This after now, Quince roughly. If you are looking to travel, go somewhere fun, might I recommend Quince's High Quality Travel So we're talking lightweight shirts and shorts from $30, pants for any occasion, and comfortable lounge sets. Actually, and also premium luggage options and Durable Duffel Bags to carry it all! The best part, as always, all Quince items are priced 50 to 80 % less than similar brands. Because they partner with those top factories and they cut the cost of the middleman, and they pass the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. If you're going someplace warm, I can absolutely recommend my Quance clothing that I wear all the time because I'm in California where it's almost always warm. Wearing a pair of Quince shorts right now as we're speaking. I love them. They're good quality. They last and look good. What more could you ask for? For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to quince .com slash OA for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. Fun, That's Q -U -I -N -C -E dot com slash OA to get free shipping and 365 -day returns. Quence .com slash OA.

0:28:32 Matt: We should take a look at Brad Kerb's email, which was, I think it was leaked on David Lott's Substack. And there was something that jumped out at me here about... The full existential crisis, this whole thing could have destroyed the firm, it brought the full weight of the government down. Then he said something, initially prepared to challenge the executive order in court, and a team of attorneys prepared a lawsuit in the finest traditions of the firm. But it became clear that even if we were successful initially in joining the executive it would not solve the fundamental problem, which is that clients perceived our firm as being persona non grata with the administration. That's it. All it took.

0:29:02 Liz: All it took.

0:29:03 Matt: Could prevent the executive order from taking effect, but we couldn't erase it. I don't know. I mean, maybe again, I'm so far from this world, I would want to hire an attorney who had successfully stood up the Trump administration and won. Isn't that, I don' know. What kind of people are you working with here? I mean I know that they represent people like Exxon and other fairly evil multinational conglomerates, but what are they really afraid of?

0:29:24 Thomas: Just seems insane. I mean, I... don't think any big law firm is progressive and I never had any illusions about that. I but like a veneer is still a vaneer. Like it's good to have a vuneer. It's better to have that than not.

0:29:34 Matt: A story. Right. Yeah.

0:29:36 Thomas: And also just the fact that like this is so stupid strategically, like every, because this costs Trump nothing. Costs him nothing and then wins him $40 million in a huge, you victory. And then he gets to move on to whoever else now.

0:29:51 Liz: Else, a complete, a total, psychological you victory because you defeated, you the litigation firm, right?

0:29:59 Thomas: In four days.

0:30:00 Matt: Yeah, that's dark.

0:30:03 Thomas: It's just, this is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

0:30:07 Liz: And I think one other really pathetic thing, and I think something that's really sad about this executive order and Paul Weiss's response is, you know, the executive order says, among other things, specifically, Paul Weis has acknowledged the wrongdoing of its former partner, Mark Pomerantz. Executive order indicated that they actually acknowledged that Mark Pomerantz, who worked with Alvin Bragg and was trying to build a case against Trump and famously resigned because he didn't think that Alvin was being aggressive enough. Oh, acknowledged his wrongdoing. And there's apparently some controversy, you amongst. Everyone, whether, oh, Brad Karp really in his meeting by himself with, with Trump acknowledge the wrongdoing or do you not? You know what? Like it doesn't matter. And well, let me rephrase. Pomerantz has come out and said, don't you think he did. It doesn't mind. He's taken a sort of a high road approach, but here's the thing. You knew how you stand up for your former partner and friend, Mark Pomerance. You would put out a statement, Brad Kopp, and you would

0:31:10 Thomas: But again, if so, yeah, if the whole thing is they're not even just worried about the executive order, they're worried about their with the president. And yeah, you can't contradict the leader. Otherwise, if that's what you're worried this is so fascist. This is so enabling. This Is unbelievable. Like right when I thought I couldn't be more disappointed in lawyers. Like,

0:31:28 Matt: Yeah, here's from 140 alumni of Paul Wise signed onto an angry letter, which I think is worth reading just to, we do want to give some credit to people who understand how bad this is in this world. Your post -surrender message to the firm, you expressed the view that the firm could now put the matter behind us. That statement is not just bad lawyering compounding bad negotiating, comma, it is false. It is already clear that the president is claiming that the term gave away more than it admits. Even worse, from the standpoint of posterity, it profit by forfeiting its soul. I would argue with the soul thing, but yeah, I mean, that's a great statement. And Mark Elias, who specifically is also being targeted by name, maybe we'll move on to that in a minute here, about the shameful capitulation. Now, Mark EliAS is very much being targeted personally by the Trump administration, great litigator. He makes the point, the every one of its partners in the entire profession.

0:32:14 Matt: And I think we can all agree on that. They But have not covered themselves in glory in this, and I have not seen anybody but Trump and MAGA people saying this was a good thing.

0:32:21 Liz: Are a few other things I want to just highlight from. So as noted, Karp's internal email to the firm was leaked. But I want highlight a few things from his internal email trying to explain his spinelessness that particularly troubling to me. This email, he says, we were hopeful the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. Let me just say, you know who had rallied to Perkins Coie's side was Paul Weiss, okay? So whatever. And then he said, we tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins -Coie, but you hadn't.

0:32:57 Thomas: You're the you that you're talking about.

0:33:00 Liz: For firms to support us in the wake of the order. Okay, in It was four days later, you took that private jet to DC. So it's just, mean, I that I think is really... just so insincere and really And the other thing that I found to be, I just, I think my eyes rolled out of my head and I had to go chasing after them, but toward the very, it's a very long, long letter that he sent internally to the firm. Honestly, like I very, very long.

0:33:04 Thomas: Four days. Just dishonest. Yeah. TLDR. I'm a coward.

0:33:29 Liz: Funny because actually I had a friend at Paul Weiss who at one point, one of the things that he was working on was training associates to write shorter emails because partners were saying the emails were too long and they didn't have time to read them. But Brad Karp wrote the world's longest email. And of last lines toward the very end of it, he says, 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. Hoo.

0:33:54 Thomas: Neither can you. You didn't confront it at all.

0:33:59 Liz: Most equipped institution to confront it.

0:34:03 Matt: Incredible. That's incredible. I mean, the last two weeks we've been talking about Mahmoud Khalil and the other people targeted for their political views who are being deported. And then we talked about the Venezuelans being depunted to El Salvador, to the most hellish place in the Western Hemisphere, this prison. Who have very strong lawyers standing up to fight for them, but who they themselves are the direct targets of these executive actions. And just to compare yourself to somebody like that, when you have all of the resources and all of money and

0:34:28 Thomas: Millions of dollars. Like, it's just so pathetic.

0:34:30 Matt: All the lawyers.

0:34:32 Thomas: God, this is pathetic.

0:34:32 Matt: Yeah. So bad.

0:34:34 Thomas: Stop doing it. You're not equipped to do whatever job this is, whoever this is. I can't keep it straight. It's all one white guy in a suit to me. But like, whatever guy you're talking about, he should quit.

0:34:42 Liz: And the last thing I would just say, you know, you looking, you know, at his letter, which is just a long apology letter for being yourself to fascism is I actually the business case for this is really short sighted. And I hate doing that argument, but. These M&A lawyers at Paul Weiss were like freaking out and they're going to lose clients and stuff like that. You know, if there isn't rule of law, there's not going to be M&A, right?

0:35:04 Thomas: Yeah. Totally.

0:35:05 Liz: Like if there's a stable political and economic environment, which I let's just look at everything else happening here. And if there I don't know, lawyers to challenge unconstitutional executive orders or implementation of executive responsibilities that create a certain environment, certain government regulators, all this stuff. There won't be M &A. Just insane. So

0:35:29 Thomas: I think about that with businesses, too, and the tariffs and ruining the economy. It's like at point have you to recognize that this isn't good. I mean, all these billionaires, too. It is the same thing. It's like, hey, at a certain point you don't have a society anymore. Maybe not right now, but you got to worry about where this is going. And do you want to live in that world even if you're doing really well right now?

0:35:52 Matt: And you're actively fostering. I mean, I don't know if they can imagine, I've just read about it, but somewhere like Russia, where all of the outcomes of court cases are pretty much decided ahead of time, and it's all just kind of a show trial, and whichever side is favored by the government or has paid the judge the most money, I mean then that's where we're heading here, if lawyers continue to capitulate this way. Yeah, so any other thoughts on Paul Weiss before we move on?

0:35:52 Liz: I it would be continued ranting, but I'm ready.

0:36:15 Matt: We love your ranting, but we do have a couple of other things. We should talk about Jenner and Block, which I was not familiar with before, but their crimes appear to be defending trans people in asylees, doing DEI and rehiring Andrew Weissman, who we may know from MSNBC and other places, worked on the Mueller investigation. This order went out on the 25th of March, 11 days after the capitulation of Paul Weiss, and was once again entitled Addressing Risks from Jenner and Block. Administration is committed to addressing the significant risks associated with law firms, particularly so-called quote-unquote big law firms that engage in conduct detrimental to critical American interests. Again, not totally disagreeing with you, Donald Trump, but disagreeing this approach, I have to say. Many firms take actions that threaten public safety and national security, et cetera, et yeah, he's, I mean, just basically talking all the way through here and that they just don't like the work they're doing. They don't want the cases they take and the things they stand for. And then specifically mentioning Andrew Weissman and how that they were quote unquote, thrilled to rehire him, uh, after working on the Mueller probe. So, I don't know how people can't see this or if they're not seeing it, or maybe this isn't getting

0:37:17 Matt: Out there enough, but oh

0:37:17 Thomas: Well, this just makes me think like, OK, someone involved is MAGA like something like it doesn't. That crazy? Because there's no rational reason to do any of this.

0:37:26 Liz: No, that's the thing. That's like, they're just actually that cowardly and stupid. I

0:37:31 Thomas: Don't know. Really? I mean, what are the odds? They're not all Democrats, you fact that like in order to be still a Republican in this day and age, you have to have believed so many lies. I start to worry about like, are people just outing themselves as like, oh, they're okay. They're a Trump supporter and you have just go along with it because this is what you believe. I don't know.

0:37:52 Liz: I mean, I disagree, but I almost, it doesn't matter in the sense that I think, you know, with respect to Paul Weiss, that is just an incredible, you they didn't want to take a hit. They didn't their, partner, you you to go dip below 7.5 million. And so ultimately they were just that spineless. I think that's just the thing is that.

0:37:54 Thomas: I mean you know better. But you've never been in that position to see your per partner income go from 7.5 to 7.3. I have kids. Don't know what it's like, Liz.

0:38:26 Matt: Yeah. It really is the Parker Posey meme. You're so right.

0:38:29 Liz: – and the thing is if anyone had a brain, which no one here does, if any lawyers had any ability to engage in collective action, if anyone realized like this is your I am Spartacus moment, they all are so much stronger than this administration. The administration has terrible lawyers in it. We've talked about this all the time. Just needed to kind of realize and just take a moment and say that like – administration is threatening them with something that is totally illegal. They are a group of lawyers. They're dedicated to upholding the law and they're going to fight back and they need to do that. And they just didn't. And And, it's, it's literally because they're that pathetic is, my view. Um, was actually looking at Paul Weiss's, uh, open secrets, looking at their, their, donations, you the at the firm who are donating to candidates. It's like something like 95 % of the firm. That's on this, website this where you can kind of pull this stuff is donating to Democrats. Like it's nuts, but they just, they just are, suck yeah, that much.

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0:40:52 Matt: As we're recording this, we are exactly pretty much a month after the first shot and the first one that we talked about. And I want to talk about the most recent sort of general order before the last one we were talking about. March 22nd. Is the one that has to do with me personally. So I have to talk about it. Preventing abuses of the legal system and the federal court. So this to me, now all of those are individually scary. There's a trend that is very scary when you get the through line of going after big firms that do a lot of pro bono work and that specifically engage in litigation against the U.S. government. But this one is more than a warning shot. This is a direct shot into the lines here. Order is essentially saying that they are going to go after lawyers who sue the government. But more on my side, the thing that kind of will keep me up now. Immigration system, where rampant fraud and meritless claims have supplanted the constitutional and lawful bases upon which the president exercises core powers, reminding us, of course, the president can do whatever he wants to immigrants, is likewise replete with examples of unscrupulous behaviors by attorneys and law firms. For instance, the immigration bar. And powerful big law pro bono practices frequently coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting asylum claims, etc., etc., national security going on from there. I just want to point out that this is... as a very tired thing that Mag has been saying for a long time, that none of these asylum claims that we've been working on for all this time are valid, that these people aren't afraid to go home. And if they are telling a convincing story, it's because they've been coached and they're lying. I challenge the Trump administration publicly to find anything in any of our records in which we have coached or exaggerated or in any way fabricated any part of my client's lived experience, just to start with. The threat here in this order is that they're going to be filing bar complaints and, if necessary, criminal prosecution against lawyers who file asylum claims. And who take on the government in court for what they consider to be frivolous challenges. And this was spurred on by the lawyers who brought the very successful so far claim to the Alien Enemies Act, which we've been talking about, which I still think is one of the greatest threats to the American legal system so far in two months. Idea that you can deport people with no due process without seeing any kind of administrative or judicial review. This was their response, was that they're going to start going after lawyers who sue the government and immigration lawyers who help immigrants. And I will say, just to get this out, that I'm not too concerned about the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers taking a serious complaint from the federal government about my conduct. I think they can investigate that and see it's frivolous and it's something that's retaliatory. But what they can do for immigration lawyers is they can keep us from appearing in federal immigration court that has its own registration system. And so that's what I'm concerned about, is they're going to start disqualifying people from immigration court. And this could be a real problem because we already have such a shortage of attorneys able to represent people in deportation proceedings, and this could really cut them down quite a lot more for experienced attorneys especially.

0:43:31 Liz: Practically, practically, say if they wanted to kind of, a whole segment of attorneys, how would they kind of start to do that?

0:43:38 Matt: They just go back in our cases and they just find whatever they can, whatever they possibly can. And they could file with the disciplinary action in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which has its own sort not exactly licensing, but registration system. And I could lose, I have like a special bar number inside the immigration courts and I could that. There necessarily direct reciprocity with Massachusetts. Massachusetts could make its own decisions about my conduct or anybody else's. Since that is an executive branch agency, the immigration courts, and it'd be the executive branch reviewing whether or not these lawyers should appear in front of them. I haven't seen anybody talking about this, but that is my main concern when I see this is that they're going to start disqualifying people from appearing in deportation proceedings or what's left of deportation when they're done with all of this. That's just, of course, very personal to me and to many of the people that I know and care about. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if we start getting tax audits or, you know, and again, we've been very careful about all this stuff and I welcome. I shouldn't say welcome. Please don't audit me, but if you want to. As it is, we're very careful about our records and about the work that we do here. And I know that my colleagues are also the same. There certainly are unethical lawyers doing unethcial things in every field. And every so often they do. But for the most part, the people are doing the worst

0:44:42 Matt: Stuff in the immigration system.

0:44:42 Thomas: I mean, sure. But like, what's the lucrative like to be, you know?

0:44:47 Matt: Oh, there's a lot of money to be made in fraud if you want to commit immigration fraud. I mean, if you wanna do marriage rings, if wanna make up asylum claims, I mean I've seen some really idiotic stuff where they'll just like photocopy an asylum claim basically and hand somebody a story and that never holds up. Like that's not gonna work. It's a terrible thing to do because if somebody is found to have filed a fraudulent asylum claim, they can never do anything with the immigration system ever again. It's a complete death penalty. So like if it's actually fraud, not just if it is exaggerated or whatever, right? So when I'm thinking about all of this, I spent the whole day thinking about this order. And to be clear, I'm not saying that I'm afraid. Think that we have a lot of support, and there's a lot good people on the right side of this thing. And immigration lawyers, I can tell you, are not going to roll over like Paul Weiss. They're just not. I know us. Is what we do. This what we live for. And you can come after all of us, but we have I'm very proud of that.

0:44:51 Thomas: Fair enough. Yeah. Well, they can come after your second mansion and your private jet though, Matt. Like. Going to start to sweat once they take that first private jet away from you. And you can only use the backup jet that you have.

0:45:47 Matt: I'm only smart financial decision I made in my life was buying a condo right before the market crashed in Boston, which I could never afford now. So that's it. That's the only money I've ever spent properly or made. Have to say this, though, that this trend within just the past month, and this is rapid fire coming at us. There's going to be plenty more, and I'm afraid we're going to have to meet and talk about this another time soon. Did, of course, make me think about the Third Reich like so many things do, and fascism generally, because we've been talking about this for months now, about how fascism requires lawyers. It's the only way to make the transition to autocracy, to a strict authoritarian government, is you have to have lawyers on board, and they certainly do, including a couple of the lawyers that we spent, the three of us, months and months making fun of in the Trump trial, in season one of Gavelpod, but are now running the Department of Justice.

0:46:29 Matt: But we have certainly named and shamed plenty of bad lawyers in this administration who are doing work that I can't imagine for reasons I just will never understand. On the other side of things, you need to disqualify and discredit the lawyers who are the good work and are getting in your way. And that is something I've talked about before, but the Nazis... Some of the first people they came after, after people they considered to be deviants and criminals, were lawyers, people who had stood up to the Nazis in court, like Hans Lytton, who I've mentioned before, who had cross -examined Hitler on the stand for hours, embarrassed him, and he never forgot it. And he sent him to the camps, and that's where he died. Talked before, too, about the civil service reforms they did early on in 1933. in which they essentially disqualified all Jewish lawyers, like anybody who was a lawyer, a judge, or an academic, or any other kind of civil servant who was Jewish was out. And of course, there were plenty of Jewish lawyers in Germany at the time, and most of them generally on the right side of things. But also, when I was looking back, as we were thinking about this episode, I went back and looked at the law concerning admission to the bar from April 7th, 1933. And there's a pretty scary thing in here, in Article 3 of that, in which it said that Persons who are active in the communistic sense are excluded from the admission to the bar. And of course, that was at the time, you know, something that Hillary was particularly concerned about. And you do hear Maga talking about communists today, but I could just as easily see some sort of order issuing about Antifa, right? Their obsession from the first Trump term.

0:47:47 Matt: I'm sure that's going to be coming up again.

0:47:47 Thomas: They're already doing it with a DEI thing. That's already that.

0:47:51 Matt: Right. Communistic sense.

0:47:52 Thomas: It's really easy to say that everyone's crying wolf or that it's we're overreacting with these comparisons. But when you are going targeting a law firm and saying your DEI practices in big law, something that's already white male, like than, you know, among the most of any industry or job or whatever, like in terms of demographics. Already among the most skewed toward white men, and you're saying your DEI stuff is unacceptable, that is the same. You're targeting non -white, non -male people. You just are.

0:48:23 Thomas: You are cleansing the big law of that.

0:48:23 Matt: That's right. That Yeah. And you look at examples from the Third Reich from 1933. There's a law review article I think we can link to here about the complicity of lawyers in that transition. And just an example of active in a communist sense was an attorney who agreed to represent a friend's son who'd been arrested for protesting against Hitler. That's all it took to be...

0:48:44 Thomas: That sounds a lot like now.

0:48:46 Matt: It does. And that's why I wanted to bring it up because these things are never that far away. And we're going to keep doing what we're doing, but these are scary times. And I never thought I would say that, I mean, again, I have had all the privilege in the world and I'm fully aware of that, but it's a scary time to feel vulnerable doing your job.

0:49:03 Liz: I mean, that's an incredible summary, Matt. I think a few other things I want to circle back to that you mentioned. The executive order that you discussed from March 22nd, preventing abuses of the legal system in federal court, an incredibly scary, threatening document and targeting immigration lawyers. The other thing I want to note about it is it also is in it also still targeting big law. It's targeting, you know, it refers to frivolous litigation, frivolious things, you one of the lines I found to be really interesting in it, which is really specific. It's a couple paragraphs and they say, you to discipline actually any attorney whose conduct violates laws, you Cases that implicate homeland security and public safety and election integrity, all that garbage. In complying with this directive, the attorney general shall consider the ethical duties that law partners have when supervising junior attorneys, including imputing the ethical misconduct of junior attorneys to partners or the law firm where appropriate. So let me just tell you exactly what this is about in big law when you're doing pro bono. You need to have a partner who's sort of officially supervising the pro bono matter. That's my understanding of the model. That was the model that we had. And I think it's the model basically everywhere. But oftentimes the partner is pretty hands off. The idea is you're supposed to be doing this project on your own. Right. And so, you know, as long as you can get some partner to sign on to something, that's fine. You go ahead. So what they're doing here. They're doing here is they're trying to shut it down from the top, tone from the Hey, big law partners, make sure, oh, you think that it's just your junior associate doing this asylum claim? No, no, no. You're going to get in trouble too. And we're going try to make sure that you don't have that lucrative Boeing client. That is exactly what they were doing with that sentence. Know, in conceiving of all of this, and the reason why I'm just so incredibly disappointed in Paul Weiss, and I think that they are, I think what they done unto themselves is so horrific, is that with all these scary orders and all these sort throwing of, you threats around, like, the reason Why is because this administration is actually scared of lawyers, right? Actually scared. They have

0:51:17 Liz: Experienced losses in the courts. They also themselves, as we've... Talked about and joked about and will continue like their lawyers are terrible. They don't have great lawyers They don' have lawyers who know how to you know, they fired like huge a segments set of the Department of Justice They don''t have lawyers that know how you know get a proper indictment. They dont have these things So it's like why are they making these incredibly scary threats? You issuing these executive orders that are patently illegal, right? They're doing so because they want to scare X, Y, Z law firm into total submission by just the breadth of their action. Whereas this law firm, if they actually fought it, if didn't bend, if it didn't break, they realize it's because the administration itself is scared. So that's why this is so bad. And that's what Paul Weiss did is so, so bad because they gave cover. They gave excuse. Showed that they're that scared too. And they shouldn't have been.

0:52:13 Matt: Such a good point.

0:52:14 Thomas: Boy, I wish there was something I could do about this. I'm taking my big law business elsewhere. Next time I have an $11 billion thing to negotiate, I'm, yeah.

0:52:20 Matt: You're a big merger.

0:52:24 Thomas: It sucks, though. God, point was very well made by both of you, and it's just, I can't believe I'm even more disappointed in big law than I already would have been. Like, it's come on. If there's one thing we can rely on big law for, it would have You get to be temporarily a hero of the resistance just for like, that you maybe negligible hit to your $8 million a year job. This is just so disappointing. And it's really freaking fascist. Unbelievable.

0:52:52 Matt: To Perkins Coie and everyone defending them. I mean, they're doing the right thing, and I hope we see more of that.

0:52:57 Thomas: Right. Well, Liz, thanks so much for coming on. Always a pleasure. Great to get your, once again, very specific perspective on this. It keeps coming up. You know, you're the center of a lot of things. It's great to have you. So thank you so much.

0:53:10 Matt: I really appreciate you.

0:53:11 Liz: You so much. And just little kind of plug or thank you from me is that I spoke to a number of people in advance of this podcast. I'm going to name all of you. Just kidding. No, I just wanted to say those people who I spoke who they are. And thank you for just lending your insights into everything that happened here.

0:53:28 Matt: Appreciate it.

0:53:29 Thomas: All right, thanks. So much for listening, everyone. See you on Monday.

0:53:32 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:53:50 Liz: You were literally a law firm, one of the best ones. Like,