California

Paul Weiss remains a brand name that is synonymous with blue-chip clients, and when these clients face extraordinary circumstances, the firm’s unassailable litigation team is a shortlisted crew in any conversation. “Paul Weiss sure has a whole lot of market share,” observes a peer. “They do great by their clients, and they are great at advising which cases to go all the way with and which cases to settle. The whole team is superb.” The firm’s litigation capabilities extend across virtually all major commercial practices, with star power at all levels within each of these, and the firm shows no signs of slowing in its agenda of recruiting and grooming this talent. Historically an East Coast powerhouse, the firm has since entrenched itself in the California market with the January 2021 addition of a San Francisco office, spearheaded by Melinda Haag and Walter Brown, two leaders in the white-collar area. Paul Weiss then followed with an office in Los Angeles, opened in 2024, with product liability specialist Kim Branscome installed in this outpost. “Kim made her bones on the talc cases for J&J,” testifies a peer. “I never tried a case with her, but I have read a few of her transcripts. She is known and respected in the products world, gets work.” The doubling-down on the West Coast was not the only recent development for the firm; a peer notes, “Paul Weiss is getting more involved in the employment area! [New York partners] Lisa Velasquez and Brette Tannenbaum are two people I would name for this, although Brette does a lot of other varied commercial work as well.”

     DC partners Bill Isaacson and trial lawyer Karen Dunn continue to draw acclaim for their antitrust work. The pair logged a March 2022 dismissal of an antitrust lawsuit filed by the DC Attorney General that challenged Amazon’s “fair-pricing” policy nationwide and then defeated the district’s post-trial motion for reconsideration and its motion to further amend its complaint in August. The case eventually wound up at the DC Court of Appeals, with oral argument taking place in December 2023. Appellate specialist Kannon Shanmugam is acting in the appeals capacity. “He’s amazing, really professional,” extols a peer on Shanmugam’s behalf. “He does a great job for his client and deserves the reputation he has.” Dunn and Isaacson, along with Jessica Phillips, also won a major bench trial victory in the District of Nevada on behalf of Oracle in a high-stakes, long-running copyright infringement dispute with Rimini Street. Issuing an extraordinary injunction order in July 2023, the court ordered Rimini to shut down its automated tools and issue and prominently post a 15-point press release in which Rimini discloses its alleged untruths to the public.
     New York’s Daniel Kramer and Audra Soloway, both stars in the securities capacity, logged another triumph for Amazon, and several current and former executives, in December 2023, when the Western District of Washington dismissed without prejudice a putative securities class action alleging that the defendants had defrauded investors in connection with statements made about Amazon’s relationship with third-party sellers and about the pace of growth in Amazon’s fulfilment distribution network. “Dan Kramer is really amazing,” raves a peer. “He’s got a great understated touch that is perfect for managing stressful borderline-crisis situations.” Kramer and Soloway also teamed up with Brown and Haag as trial counsel for Apple following the court’s denial of summary judgment in a securities fraud class action relating to a single statement by CEO Tim Cook on a 2018 earnings call concerning Apple’s business in China. Meredith Dearborn, another star in the firm’s San Francisco office, also was part of team. Dearborn lays claim to her own fan base in the securities community. “I like Meredith a lot,” asserts one peer, who goes on to confirm, “She worked with us on a case for [fintech and crypto entity] Ripple, and she impressed me. She’s young, maybe only 40, but is really poised for greatness.”
     In yet another Amazon engagement, a team composed of New York stars Roberto Gonzalez, Loretta Lynch and Jeannie Rhee were retained by the online retailing juggernaut in what is purported to be one of the largest publicly agreed-to racial equity audits to date. The audit analyzes the company’s overall policies, practices, programs and initiatives to determine their racial impacts on the company’s wage-earning employees.
     Enthusiasm for the always-championed New York securities star Brad Karp remains strong and shows no signs of abating. “Yes, Brad is still ‘the man,’” attests a peer. “You can expect that to be the case for a while yet. He’s in-demand, yes, largely due to his savvy, people-pleaser personality, but also because he really works hard for it.” Another peer supports this view: “He is still everywhere at once, still a hustler. One wonders if he sold his soul for this energy.” A team composed of Karp, Tannenbaum, Andrew Ehrlich and Lorin Reisner won a significant victory in April 2023 for The Blackstone Group and Blackstone Alternative Asset Management when a Kentucky Court of Appeals panel unanimously held that the Kentucky attorney general should never have been permitted to intervene in and revive a $50 billion derivative action in which the original plaintiffs were found to lack constitutional standing. The case was brought by a group of individual Kentucky public pension members in 2017, alleging that the Asset Management entity breached its fiduciary duties by unlawfully selling unsuitably risky custom funds of hedge funds to the pension agency, as well as engaging in a civil conspiracy among investment managers and trustees to conceal this.