When the week began, it looked like Brad Karp would keep his job leading the elite law firm Paul Weiss.
Mr. Karp’s name had surfaced in the vast trove of documents involving the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that were released last Friday by the Justice Department. But that was not surprising to senior partners at Paul Weiss.
Mr. Karp for years had represented Leon Black, the private equity billionaire who had a long and complicated relationship with Mr. Epstein.
As the week progressed, however, more documents emerged that suggested to the senior partners — many of whom owed their careers to Mr. Karp — that Mr. Karp’s relationship with Mr. Epstein was deeper than they had thought, according to three people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss internal firm business.
One document stood out — a 2019 email revealing that Mr. Karp had offered his legal opinion to Mr. Epstein about a plea deal he made roughly a decade earlier involving soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Mr. Karp weighed in on the legal matter even though Mr. Epstein was not a Paul Weiss client.
On Wednesday evening, a small group of senior partners known as the deciding group, who are in charge of determining whom to hire and fire, held a conference call to discuss how the firm should respond to the new revelations.
A few of the lawyers in that meeting expressed disappointment that Mr. Karp hadn’t resigned already, said one Paul Weiss partner familiar with the group’s discussion. They agreed that Mr. Karp had to step down as chairman.
He would be replaced immediately, the group decided, by Scott Barshay, the firm’s biggest moneymaker.
And Mr. Barshay, who is a member of the group, relayed the decision to Mr. Karp, one person familiar with the conversation said.
Some details of the deciding group’s move to replace Mr. Karp as chairman were previously reported by The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Karp and a spokesman for Paul Weiss declined to comment. Mr. Barshay did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Karp’s problems began months ago when embarrassing revelations about his dealings with Mr. Epstein began to dribble out of the Justice Department’s files.
Over the past week, the firm had informally surveyed clients about their reactions to the mentions of Mr. Karp in the files, one of the partners said. A small number of clients told the firm’s lawyers that they would have to reconsider future business with the firm because of the reputational risk.
In one of the newly released emails, Mr. Epstein suggested to Mr. Karp that Mr. Black should hire a private investigator to surveil a former mistress. Mr. Black, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management, is a major Paul Weiss client.
In another email, Mr. Karp advised Mr. Epstein on a case involving some of the women who had accused Mr. Epstein of abusing them as minors.
“The draft motion is in great shape. It’s overwhelmingly persuasive. Truly,” Mr. Karp wrote in the March 3, 2019, email to Mr. Epstein. “I particularly liked the argument that the ‘victims’ lied in wait and sat on their rights for their strategic advantage, knowing you were in prison, before they came forward,” Mr. Karp added.
That email was sent by Mr. Karp a few months before Mr. Epstein was arrested and died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell.
The email seemed to undercut a statement the firm had released on Monday defending Mr. Karp. That statement said that Mr. Karp met Mr. Epstein through his work with Mr. Black and “during the course of that representation, which spanned several years, Mr. Karp never witnessed or participated in any misconduct.” The statement added that “Mr. Karp attended two group dinners in New York City and had a small number of social interactions by email, all of which he regrets.”
Mr. Karp, who will remain a partner at the firm, has a list of powerful clients including Apollo and the National Football League.
Replacing Mr. Karp with Mr. Barshay represents a longer term evolution of Paul Weiss. The firm was long known as a litigation powerhouse, and Mr. Karp, a litigator himself, positioned Paul Weiss during the first Trump administration as a bulwark against the erosion of democracy by taking on pro bono cases challenging Mr. Trump’s policies.
Then, last March, Mr. Karp reached a deal with President Trump to address an executive order that could have crippled the firm’s business by essentially preventing it from representing clients before the federal government. That deal was attacked by much of the legal community and some within Paul Weiss as a dangerous capitulation to Mr. Trump.
Part of what drove that deal were the corporate partners who worried about the firm’s ability to represent its clients, though the agreement eventually garnered broad support across the firm’s top leadership.
Still, the deal exposed tension between some of the firm’s corporate lawyers and some of its top litigators, and in the months following, several well-known litigation partners left. Among them were Karen Dunn, Jeannie Rhee and Damian Williams. Mr. Williams, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, had been one of the firm’s high profile hires in 2025. He left Paul Weiss just six months after joining the firm.
Lauren Hirschcontributed reporting.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg is a Times investigative reporter writing about big business with a focus on health care. She has been a reporter for more than a decade.
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