Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
It is easy to forget that when Paul Weiss and the other law firms that capitulated to Trump cut their deals, they thought they would be viewed as savvy dealmakers. Now they look like craven fools and gutless cowards.
— Marc Elias, a former partner at Perkins Coie who left to launch his own law firm in 2021, commenting on the nine firms that bent a knee to Donald Trump, in the wake of three of the president’s executive orders targeting law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale being found unconstitutional. In an interview with MSNBC, Elias went on to say that “rather than look like savvy businessmen and women, they now look like naive rubes” and that “[t]he business case for this turned out to be a pretty crappy one.”
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
