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American law firm
the law firm

Paul, Weiss's core practice areas are in litigation and corporate law. In addition to its headquarters in New York, the firm has offices in Washington, D. C., San Francisco, Wilmington, Delaware, Toronto, London, Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong.

The firm that eventually became Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was started in New York in 1875 by Samuel William Weiss and Julius Frank as a general commercial practice. In 1923, Samuel's son, Louis Weiss, started his own firm with John F. Wharton. and Randolph Paul joined the firm, bringing the firm up to thirteen lawyers.

In 1950, Simon Rifkind joined the firm and it became Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He later served as chief counsel in the Senate investigation of the Iran Contra affair in 1987. Pauli Murray, a civil rights and gender equality activist, was an associate at Paul, Weiss from 1956 to 1960. In 1966, Rifkind recruited Theodore Sorensen who became the firm's first international lawyer. He drafted a constitution for Tajikistan in 1993 when the nation emerged from the former Soviet Union. After he stepped down from Homeland Security in 2017 he rejoined the firm's litigation department. The organization ranked firms by billable hours, demographic diversity, and pro bono participation. For diversity among partner attorneys, the firm was ranked in the 61st to 80th percentile for Black, Hispanic, Asian, and LGBT categories. Paul, Weiss was also ranked number 52 out of the 74 firms evaluated, for opportunities for advancement for female attorneys. This is slightly higher than the average for law firms (23.6% as reported by the National Association for Law Placement). The photograph also included only one woman. Although Paul, Weiss had a reputation for being more diverse than other elite big law firms, the announcement drew criticisms that even "diverse" big law firms still partook in racist and sexist methods of employment and promotion. The photograph served as a "lightning rod" for the growing frustration that elite law careers are still largely reserved for white men. Loretta Lynch, the first black woman to serve as United States attorney general, joined Paul, Weiss in 2019 as a litigation partner. In 2020, Paul, Weiss said it wanted to unite law firms and public interest organizations across the U. S. in a pro bono effort to root out racism. Attorney Jeh Johnson of Paul, Weiss was assigned to serve as New York State Chief Judge Janet DiFiore's Special Advisor on Equal Justice in the Courts. A 2021 assessment singled out Paul, Weiss among law firms as engaging in the most litigation, lobbying and transactional work for fossil fuel companies. The company received the lowest grade in a 2021 scorecard of law firms on climate change actions. The firm had represented fossil fuel companies in 30 cases over the five preceding years. In 2022, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was a founding member of the Legal Alliance for Reproductive Rights, a coalition of United States law firms offering free legal services to people seeking and providing abortions in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade. In November 2023, amid a wave of antisemitic incidents at elite U. S. law schools, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was among a group of major law firms who sent a letter to top law school deans warning them that an escalation in incidents targeting Jewish students would have corporate hiring consequences. The letter said "We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses."

Paul, Weiss represents detainees held by the U. S. military at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. A number of the detainees went on a hunger strike to protest alleged inhumane conditions. In response, prison authorities force fed detainees. Paul, Weiss attorneys filed an emergency application demanding information about the condition of the detainees. In a ruling in October 2005, Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the government to provide the detainees' lawyers with 24 hours' notice before initiating a force feeding, and to provide lawyers with the detainees’ medical records a week before force feeding. Paul, Weiss advised the casino operating unit of Caesars Entertainment in its bankruptcy proceedings, taking over the role from O'Melveny & Myers in 2011. It later became known that Apollo Global Management, a private equity sponsor of Caesars, was also a Paul, Weiss client. Paul, Weiss was found to have a conflict of interest in the matter, although an investigation found no actual harm to Caesars or its creditors. Paul, Weiss represented the China Medical Technologies (CMED) Audit Committee in investigating an anonymous letter alleging possible illegal and fraudulent activities by management, prior to CMED being discovered to have been the subject of a $355 million fraud. Paul, Weiss issued the report in the Deflategate football inflation controversy in 2015. In 2016, Fox News hired the firm to conduct an internal investigation about Roger Ailes, leading to the end of Ailes' career.

In 2018, Paul, Weiss worked pro bono to try and find over 400 parents who were separated from their families at the southern border of the United States and then deported. The work was part of the federal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit, which was brought against the Trump administration over its family separation policy. ACLU asked Paul, Weiss to head the committee that worked with three nonprofits to find the parents. He had served over twenty four years in prison. Lawyers from Paul, Weiss were his pro bono defense team.