From time to time, current events lead us to revisit—albeit from a slightly different angle—a topic we have covered in a prior post.  This is one of those times, and the topic is priorities.

The current event is a New York Times investigative piece titled “How a Top Law Firm Went From Standing Up to Trump to Bending the Knee.”  The article is about Paul, Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (“Paul Weiss”), but what interests us has nothing to do with the title. It has to do with the final line in the article:

The transformation of Paul Weiss was complete.

The reporters, Michael S. Schmidt and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, describe in fascinating detail a dramatic cultural shift that occurred at Paul Weiss during the period from 2008 until early 2026—less than 20 years in the history of a firm that traces its roots to 1875.  In fact, the shift seems to have taken place in just the past 10 years.

The Paul Weiss Transformation

We highly recommend reading the NYT article in full, but here are some highlights from the article and the firm’s website that outline what we see as either a shift in the firm’s priority or an unmasking of its real priority.

• The firm “was a titan in the legal business, known for its stable of elite litigators and for its history of standing up to the government and championing progressive causes going back to the civil rights movement.” That reputation attracted many young lawyers interested in social justice.

• The firm’s “Statement of Firm Principles” going back to 1963 still says, “We refuse to be deterred by the unpopularity of a client or his cause from accepting a matter which justice and professional responsibility prompt us to take.”

• The story Paul Weiss told of itself in 2008 was “doing well and doing good.” That was also the year that it elected a new chairman, Brad Karp. Karp had a two-part plan—publicly embracing the firm’s pro bono practice in order to set it apart for recruiting purposes from other firms that were “more focused on the bottom line,” while also focusing on the bottom line. In 2008, Paul Weiss had an average profit per partner of $2.5 million.

• Karp’s bottom-line strategy was principally focused on increasing the firm’s corporate practice. The NYT article explains, “Mr. Karp decided that maintaining and increasing the firm’s robust profits required pivoting hard to corporate work.”  In furtherance of that strategy, in 2016 Karp announced the hiring of Scott Barshay, a leading M&A lawyer, from Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

• Some at Paul Weiss were concerned that Barshay “was going to change the culture.” They were assured that “he had no interest in being part of leadership” and there was no reason to worry because the firm “had a well-established culture.”

• By the early 2020s, “the corporate work Mr. Barshay had been hired to enhance accounted for 65 percent of the firm’s revenue, dwarfing its litigation work.”  Despite initially indicating no interest in firm leadership, Barshay had joined the group that managed the firm and determined compensation.

• From 2008 when Karp took over as chairman and the beginning of 2025, Paul Weiss had doubled in size and average profit per partner had more than tripled to $8 million.

• In a 2023 address to partners, Karp’s remarks appear to have been shaped by “Barshay’s influence and shifting political winds.” He praised the firm’s rich history of pro bono work, acknowledging that it was what drew many lawyers to the firm. He then noted that the firm had grown and recruited lawyers “with divergent political sensibilities.”  He reportedly went on to say, “We are, after all, a commercial law firm, and not a public interest advocacy organization,” and said that in continuing its pro bono work the firm needed to “be sensitive as to which matters we publicly promote.

• While, during President Trump’s first term, Paul Weiss took on a number of causes that opposed the administration, in Trump’s second term, Barshay was reportedly the force that pushed the firm to take the controversial step of settling rather than fighting when the President signed an executive order imposing sanctions on certain law firms. The reporters note, “behind the public disbelief was a deeper story of an institution that had slowly come loose from its roots.”

• Notwithstanding the “Statement of Firm Principles,” Barshay reportedly used his growing influence “to curtail the social justice litigation at the core of the firm’s culture, viewing it as bad for business because it could alienate clients.”

• The NYT article uncovered that, “In closed-door leadership meetings, Mr. Barshay pushed his view that lawyers were too focused on pro bono work and that the firm needed to operate as a business and recruit more aggressive associates, not soft, idealistic lawyers interested in social justice cases.”  The article describes one conversation in which Karp acknowledged to a colleague that he “was losing control to Mr. Barshay” and “was trying to protect the firm’s culture and employees from” Barshay.

• It was Barshay’s succession to Karp as chairman in February 2026 that prompted the NYT reporters to conclude, “The transformation of Paul Weiss was complete.”

Refresher on Priorities

We devoted a post (#172–“Priority” Problems and Solutions) to a discussion of “priorities”.  Here is just a short refresher.

The word “priority” has an interesting history.  In his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown observes:

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.

Similarly, the Bible teaches that a person can have only one ultimate master or allegiance. In the Bible verse we have probably quoted more than any other in our posts—over 70 times—Matthew 6:24 warns “no one can serve two masters.” A person or organization may have many responsibilities and operational priorities, but only one can be the ultimate priority—the one that governs what happens when competing priorities collide.

Notwithstanding the historical root of the word and the Biblical warning, today we often talk about having numerous priorities—plural priorities.  “Plural priorities” is a reality of how we use the word “priority” today, how we think about our lives, and how we think about leading an organization. Karp had a two-part plan: publicly promote pro bono work to attract recruits and grow profits through a stronger corporate practice.

Priority problems underlie business as usual and the brokenness caused by business as usual. They are also at the root of many of the trials, fears, mistakes and missed opportunities we face in our personal lives.

Equal Priorities:  While a person or an organization can have “plural” priorities, it can’t have equal priorities. The nature of something having priority is that it is prior to every other “priority” other than any priority that ranks even higher.  At the end of the day, there can only be one primary priority that will win out. Other “priorities” usually get reduced to being “means” or “strategies”—valuable and sometimes essential, but subject to sacrifice when they no longer serve the ultimate priority or threaten it.

Real Priorities: A person or an organization may say it has one priority, but it may actually be pursuing a different priority–or it may think it is pursuing equal priorities when there is, in fact, one “real” priority.

Disordered Priorities: A person or an organization pursuing Biblical flourishing as its bigger WHY has disordered priorities when it sets priorities that are not aligned with Biblical priorities.

For a faithful leader to assess whether the organization’s priorities might ultimately undermine its Re-Imagined Purpose, Values, and Culture, the leader must honestly identify those priorities and, most importantly, the ultimate priority that governs them.

How a Priority Gets Undermined

Several posts have touched on ways in which an organization’s priority can get undermined.

• In post #207 (Integrity Idea 037: Take Steps to “PPP”), we talked about Protecting your Purpose from Profiteers. It was about a faithful leader taking steps to ensure that a bigger WHY was not undermined or eliminated by stakeholders with a Profit as Purpose agenda.  We noted that profiteers were most likely to show up in the form of owners or their agents.

• In post #253 (Integrity Idea 066: Stop the Rot), our focus was on how a toxic employee, customer, or vendor can have a corrosive effect that spreads like a rot on a bad apple in a barrel, undermining the organization’s Re-Imagined Values and Culture.

• In post #273 (Priority Wins—What’s Yours?), our emphasis was on the importance of faithful leaders understanding the nature of priorities and ensuring that the priority of their organization was aligned with Biblical priorities.

Some at Paul Weiss might see the firm’s transformation as the result of a profiteer being allowed to enter its ranks and undermine a higher purpose of social justice advocacy. Others might see Barshay as a “bad apple” whose influence had a corrosive effect on the firm’s culture. We think the greater wisdom can be drawn from post #273: looking behind the firm’s stated priorities to identify the priority that ultimately governs the organization.

The Paul Weiss story may be better understood as an unmasking than as a transformation, although that unmasking led to a transformation of the culture. It revealed that “doing well and doing good” did not (because they could not) carry equal weight when the two commitments came into conflict. The firm’s culture moved from presenting those commitments as co-equal to recognizing that preserving its social-justice identity could interfere with the priority that had come to govern its decisions.

Will the Real Priority Please Stand Up

You may remember a long-running American television show called To Tell the Truth. It involved three contestants being presented to a celebrity panel, each claiming to be the subject of a human-interest story.  At the beginning of the show, the host would ask each contestant to identify themselves, and each would claim to be the subject. The panel would ask questions and try to guess the “real” subject. At the end of the show, the host would say, “Will the real [name of subject] please stand up.”

Priorities in an organization often act like the contestants in To Tell the Truth, all claiming to be the priority, but only one is the “real” priority—the one that will stand up at the end of the show and win at the end of the day. As with many organizations, including organizations with faithful leaders engaged in good faith as usual practices, “doing well and doing good” are paraded as equal priorities.

Nothing in the article suggests that Paul Weiss did not value profit or that the firm tried to hide its desire to be profitable. The issue is not whether the firm valued profit; the issue is what happened when the quest for greater profit came into conflict with the firm’s stated commitment to social justice. It does appear that Paul Weiss elevated and celebrated “doing good” more than most of their peers. It is clear that many young lawyers came to the firm because it was a place to “do good.”  Karp’s two-prong plan in 2008 was aimed at strengthening both “doing good” and “doing well.”

The firm’s “Statement of Firm Principles,” together with its public identity, presented the two commitments as capable of peaceful coexistence. But when commitments collide, coexistence is no longer the question; priority is, and there can’t be equal priorities.

Until it is time for the “real” priority to stand up, the leader of an organization operating in alignment with business as usual can maintain the illusion that people and profit occupy equal places in the organization’s hierarchy of concern.  They can even “do good” at the cost of some profit. Whether it was President Trump’s executive order or Barshay’s seemingly unapologetic and aggressive prioritization of profit, the “real” priority at Paul Weiss was forced to stand up and reveal itself.

One question the NYT article leaves open is the role of the many other partners who, on the one hand, watched profits grow from $2.5 million per partner to $8 million per partner while, on the other hand, watched the firm’s social-justice work become less central and less public. Other than the various objections to the Trump settlement, the article does not describe a sustained coalition of partners resisting the direction in which Barshay was leading the firm—toward downplaying or even hiding pro bono projects to avoid alienating profitable clients.

Whether or not Profit as Purpose was always the ultimate priority of each individual partner, and whether or not social justice was at one time the firm’s ultimate priority, the firm’s conduct revealed that Profit as Purpose had become the priority that would prevail when the two came into conflict. The real priority stood up.

The Paul Weiss story is fascinating, but the Paul Weiss priority “reveal” is not unique. A 2023 Wall Street Journal headline revealed, “At Salesforce, It Is One Big Family Until Trouble Hits Home“.  Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff was apparently known for using “the Hawaiian word ‘ohana,’ or familial bonds, to describe the company’s close relationship with employees and customers.”  In announcing the layoff of thousands of employees, Benioff summed up “priority” with one phrase “Ultimately, the success of the business has to be paramount.”  When push comes to shove, the real priority stands up.

Priorities for Faithful Leaders

Integriosity^® and the pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing require a “real” priority that aligns with Biblical priorities. As we have said many times, this does not mean that profit is bad. To the contrary, profit is necessary and good. It means changing the heart of the organization by putting profit in its proper place as a means rather than the ultimate purpose.

We believe the spirit of mammon is pervasive in our culture and insidious.  It is the principal spirit that paves the path of business as usual–the path of business in the way of the world.  It is a spirit that can cause faithful leaders to “stumble” off the ancient path of business a better way—the path of business in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.

There are really two gods from which to choose–the God of the Bible or the “gods” of this world.  Although “gods” of the world come in various forms–wealth, success, happiness, power, influence, fame, and leisure—they are all manifestations of the spirit of mammon.

Ultimate priority in the Bible is about heart. Priority in the Bible is also “all or nothing”.  There is no grey.  God calls people of Biblical faith to make him THE ultimate priority–the “at the end of the day” priority.

“Grey” can feel good, because it is better than black.  It also feels good because it will get affirmed–even from the church and faith community.  Grey is still black — the way of the world. Remember 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” Grey may be better than black, but it is not the heart to which people of Biblical faith are called and commanded–not the priority required for faithful integrity.

In the words of Oswald Chambers: “The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough.”

Genesis makes clear that God cares about the flourishing of his creation, God cares about relationships, and God cares about work as a good thing that is necessary for the flourishing of creation and for our humanity as creations in God’s image.  Nothing in Genesis supports profit as the highest priority for work or for work in community through organizations. Work and organizations exist as part of God’s design for the flourishing of humans and communities.

We live in a fallen world in which most organizations operate according to the priorities of business as usual.  A purely linear or hierarchical approach to implementing Biblical priorities misses the reality of our world and the leader’s mandate in Genesis 1:28 (the Creation Mandate) to steward the organization in that world in a sustainable manner.

A faithful leader of a business is also a “business-leader” building a business in the world.  They face pressure from governments, analysts, markets, investors, employees, and customers. Sustainability comes with financial metrics to track and hurdles to achieve.  The world of business measures success in terms of profit and growth.  Faithful leaders providing financial capital have their own duty to steward it well.  Others providing financial capital may leverage it to threaten an organization’s sustainability. We explored these tensions in post #118 (Whose “Will” Be Done).

Maintaining sustainability in a broken world will likely require seeking “third-way” solutions that recognize the need to optimize profit and access financial capital in ways that continue to glorify God and do not sacrifice the Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities embedded in the organization’s Re-Imagined Purpose, Values and Culture.  We explored strategies for doing this in post #273 (Priority Wins—What’s Yours).

For a faithful leader leading with faithful integrity, it is about ensuring that when the “real” priority is forced to stand up and reveal itself, God is glorified.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  I believe the publication The American Lawyer contributed to transforming the culture of many law firms by forcing the “real” priority of each firm to stand up and be revealed. It gave mammon power through the sin of covetousness. Ecclesiastes 4:4 warns, “Then I saw that all toil and all skill come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” With its annual publication of profitability rankings, it made profit per partner the measuring stick of success, and firms began adjusting their cultures to meet the challenge.  Over the last several years, I have followed, with sadness, the transformation of the culture of the firm where I practiced for nearly 23 years—all in the name of profit.

In case you were wondering, yes, I knew Scott Barshay from the time he was a young associate at Cravath, through the time he became a partner, and then as my partner until I left.

ESSENCE: From time to time, current events lead us to revisit—albeit from a slightly different angle—a topic we have covered in a prior post.  This is one of those times, and the topic is priorities. The current event is a New York Times investigative piece about the transformation of a law firm that prided itself on “doing well and doing good.” The story may be better understood as an unmasking than as a transformation, although that unmasking led to a transformation of the culture. The firm’s culture moved from presenting those commitments as co-equal to recognizing that preserving its social-justice identity could interfere with the real priority that had come to govern its decisions. You may remember a long-running American television show called To Tell the Truth. Priorities in an organization often act like the contestants in To Tell the Truth, all claiming to be the priority, but only one is the “real” priority—the one that will win at the end of the day. Integriosity^® and the pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing require a “real” priority that aligns with Biblical priorities. This does not mean that profit is bad. To the contrary, profit is necessary and good. It means changing the heart of the organization by putting profit in its proper place—as a means rather than the ultimate purpose. Ultimate priority in the Bible is about heart. Priority in the Bible is also “all or nothing”.  There is no grey.  God calls people of Biblical faith to make Him THE ultimate priority—the “at the end of the day” priority. A purely linear or hierarchical approach to implementing Biblical priorities misses the reality of our world and the leader’s mandate to steward the organization in that world in a sustainable manner. For a faithful leader leading with faithful integrity, it is about ensuring that when the “real” priority is forced to stand up and reveal itself, God is glorified.

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Photo Credit: Original image by Paul Michalski using Gemini
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