We’ve spent well over a year now documenting Paul, Weiss’s descent from Biglaw’s self-appointed conscience to its most instructive cautionary tale — the craven deal with Trump, the litigation talent that bolted in response, the Epstein emails that ended Brad Karp’s reign. This weekend, the New York Times published a sprawling investigation that stitches those threads into one narrative about a firm that came loose from its roots. And tucked inside it is a revelation that never surfaced anywhere before: the firm that made its name on the right side of history pushed out and paid off its first openly transgender partner.
Meet Lex Korberg. If you set out to design a lawyer who embodied everything Paul, Weiss claimed to stand for, you’d build them. As a junior associate, Korberg logged hundreds of hours on the Edith Windsor case that toppled the Defense of Marriage Act. They went on to help lead the defense of “the last abortion clinic in Mississippi” — that would be Jackson Women’s Health, the losing side of Dobbs — and later sued to block Idaho’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The American Lawyer named them a Young Lawyer of the Year. They were, since jump, exactly the do-well-by-doing-good story Karp loved to sell recruits. Korberg once described the gig as representing an abortion clinic in the morning and a corporate board in the afternoon, and loving both halves.
Then Scott Barshay entered the chat.
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Barshay, the M&A rainmaker Karp imported from Cravath to turn a litigation house into a deals machine, and who now runs the entire firm, reportedly told other firm leaders that after Korberg transitioned in 2021, he did not want them dealing with his clients. A transgender lawyer, he’s said to have argued, could make clients uncomfortable and cost the firm business. According to the Times, four people either heard Barshay say a version of that or were told about it at the time.
Then when Paul, Weiss and the ACLU sued to stop Idaho from throwing doctors in prison for providing gender-transition care to minors, Barshay learned the firm would be named in the ACLU’s announcement and demanded the name come out. Going forward, lawyers were reportedly told, Barshay — an M&A attorney — would personally sign off on any release like it. For Korberg, already convinced they were being singled out for scrutiny their non-trans colleagues never drew, that was the end. That’s when, according to the Times, they told Karp they wanted out.
Here’s where the firm had a choice and reached for the checkbook as the easiest way out. Rather than look into how its first openly trans partner had been treated — this being the same firm that gets hired to run other institutions’ internal investigations — Paul, Weiss negotiated an exit. According to reports, Korberg stayed on for another year doing mostly pro bono work, collected roughly $3 million, and was handed another year’s salary of about $3.5 million on top. In exchange, they agreed not to sue, not to disparage the firm, and not to breathe a word that any deal existed, the Times reports. It stayed buried until this weekend.
The firm, naturally, has a different take. Spokeswoman Laura Van Drie told the Times that Korberg was “a highly valued partner” and that Barshay had been happy to have them work for his clients, pointing to an April 2023 email in which he said he was “totally comfortable” with Korberg staffing a matter. The Times notes the same exchange shows Korberg wasn’t actually assigned to it. Korberg’s own 2024 departure announcement, unveiling a move to the legal nonprofit Her Justice, was all gratitude and higher callings — they said they felt “called to commit” to public service, and Karp praised “a brilliant lawyer and wonderful colleague.” Everyone smiled for the cameras. Nobody mentioned the deal that got them out of the firm.
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You cannot set this beside the rest of Paul, Weiss’s recent history without the ironies stacking up. This is the firm that got deserved blowback after rolling out an all-white, nearly all-male partner class in 2018, but repented by spending the following year being celebrated as the shop handing the rest of Biglaw a blueprint on diversity. Korberg was made partner ahead of the usual schedule in part because the firm needed the optics.
And the man reportedly at the center of it didn’t just survive, he won. When Karp stepped down this year over his Epstein relationship, the partnership handed the top job to Barshay. The same executive who allegedly thought a trans partner was bad for the client list now sets the firm’s direction, signs off on its compensation, and gets to decide what Paul, Weiss stands for. The guy who wanted the social justice work quieted down is the guy running the place, which means Paul, Weiss now stands for… whatever the clients are comfortable with.
Earlier: Paul Weiss Press Release Captures Everything Broken About Biglaw In One Image
Paul, Weiss Grovels To Trump, Gets Out From Under Executive Order
Brad Karp’s Paul, Weiss Reign Ends With An Epstein-File Plot Twist
Scott Barshay’s Paul, Weiss Makeover: More Money, Less Soul?
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1