Five days. Five days of journalists poring over hundreds of documents shedding light on the true extent of Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Five days of speculation about his future and five days of damaging headlines before the firm finally confirmed last night that Karp would be stepping down as chairman.
He will, however, be staying on as a partner – at least for now. After three days holed up in emergency meetings, the firm’s board seemingly concluded that while the evidence in the emails was sufficiently damning to make Karp’s leadership role untenable, with no evidence of criminality it was not serious enough for him to be forced out of the firm completely – although the need to manage his client relationships may also have been a factor here.
