In a couple of different races during the 1970s, three partners at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison ran as Democrats for U.S. senator from New York. Neither Ted Sorensen, the J.F.K. aide, Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general, nor Morris Abram, the civil-rights leader, won a seat, but their efforts offered a clue about the kind of people who worked at the firm.
So, in the 1980s, did the service of Arthur Liman as the chief Senate investigator in the Iran-Contra affair, the great crisis of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Paul, Weiss was the definition, the epitome, of the civic-minded law firm. At various times, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan were summer associates. (So was I.)
