Paul Weiss

The strict released-record roster contains five named Paul Weiss personnel in direct exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein or his staff: Brad Karp, Alan Halperin, Brad Okun, Gregory Ezring and Brian Grieve ². Raphael Russo was identified for a planned call, so the record supports planned participation but does not establish that the call occurred ². Brad Finkelstein and Mindy Lin appear in copied or planned-call roles, while Selinda Munzell, Linda Masson and an unidentified Karp assistant appear only in scheduling functions on the cited pages ³.

Kenneth Schneider's Apollo consents and Yvonne Chan's Black investment documents reached Epstein through third-party forwards, not through located direct communications from those lawyers ⁴. Eric Goldstein, Jonathan Hurwitz and Jessica Carey appear in a separate filing as counsel adverse to Epstein-related claimants and therefore do not belong in the correspondent roster ⁴. These categories describe the reviewed release pages and do not establish that no additional public or nonpublic records exist ⁴.

A later personnel recurrence is relevant but bounded: in October 2013, Boris Nikolic forwarded Epstein a JPMorgan packet containing biographies for Loretta Ippolito and two other New York trusts-and-estates lawyers ¹¹. Paul Weiss had announced Ippolito as a partner in its personal-representation department three months earlier ¹², but the packet does not show that Nikolic or Epstein interviewed, retained, or communicated with her ¹¹. A May 2021 court petition later named Ippolito and Bruce Birenboim as Paul Weiss counsel for Melinda French Gates; the corpus review found no personnel or information-flow bridge connecting the 2013 packet or Birenboim's unrelated 2016 Black-matter policy response to the divorce representation ¹³¹⁰.

On February 13, 2013, Leon Black formally retained Jeffrey Epstein and Southern Trust Company to assist Paul Weiss and McDermott Will & Emery in providing estate-planning advice to Black ⁵. The agreement's Paul Weiss notice contacts were Alan Halperin and Kenneth Schneider, not Brad Karp ⁵. It also prohibited Epstein and Southern Trust from disclosing privileged or confidential estate-planning information except as authorized by Black or the two law firms, creating a contractual boundary that must be tested message by message ⁶.

The working record shows Epstein comments entering drafts for Leon and Debra Black's historical Forms 8865 reasonable-cause statements, with Karp, Brad Okun and Mindy Lin copied on part of the drafting chain ¹⁴. A contemporaneous message asked whether Paul Weiss was writing for all three Apollo founders, but the located materials establish drafting for Leon and Debra Black and do not answer that question affirmatively for Joshua Harris or Marc Rowan ¹⁵. Karp separately forwarded Epstein an update on Harris's gift-tax audit, but that page does not establish Harris's authorization, the representation boundary, or a privilege breach ¹⁶.

A released Paul Weiss invoice summary for fiscal 2013 and 2014 itemizes $1,979,761.41 billed across existing estate planning, Project Art, Family Office work, family-member estate planning, a townhouse acquisition and a Sirius/XM derivative-suit balance ¹⁷. It records $706,603.94 paid and $1,273,157.47 due, but supplies no timekeeper allocations and does not identify any payment to Epstein ¹⁷. Separate Black-family projections label aggregate professional fees without naming a payee, so those figures cannot be assigned to Paul Weiss, Karp, Epstein, or another adviser from the cited pages ¹⁸.

Within the Black matter, Paul Weiss lawyers performed identifiable technical work: Alan Halperin challenged an art/use-tax structure under Moline Properties, and other records identify separate lawyers on Phaidon tax, entity, licensing and document work ¹⁹²⁰. Primary Family Office records also attribute aircraft and yacht-related advice to specialized counsel, including former Paul Weiss lawyer Richard Bronstein, rather than establishing a Brad Karp role in those technical workstreams ²¹.

Four Nardello memoranda delivered to Karp and Lorin Reisner state that their respective recordings were made with JD's consent; a separate October 19 draft-transcript delivery contains no equivalent consent statement ²². The located documents do not identify the engagement signatory or payer ²². The recording particulars support a bounded identity match to Leon Black's later-pleaded dispute with Guzel Ganieva, while leaving the contracting client, payment source and authorization unresolved ²³. The broader record therefore supports episodic, client-centered assistance with pockets of two-way professional exchange, not a demonstrated durable system spanning every firm matter ²⁴.

In 2014, Paul Weiss lawyers Raphael Russo and Gregory Ezring completed substantive review of a supporting-organization roadmap for Jeffrey Epstein, while the Gates Foundation general counsel stated that Morgan Lewis remained Foundation counsel ⁷. The record supports Epstein-side Paul Weiss work and consultation with Foundation counsel, but no located engagement letter, invoice or payer record shows that the Foundation retained or paid Paul Weiss ⁷.

The located records document other matters with different postures. Paul Weiss publicly states that Brad Karp led the team advising Carlos Ghosn in a 2019 SEC settlement, but no source traces information offered by Epstein into that settlement ⁸. An archived firm biography listed SoftBank among Karp's clients without identifying the matter, dates, scope, payer, or Rajeev Misra as the client ²⁵. A Caesars exchange proves a terse Karp-Epstein discussion and separate firm work, but not Karp's personal mandate or the content source for his answer ²⁶.

In the Robert Kraft sequence, Epstein offered Karp a local Palm Beach representative and Karp replied only that Kraft needed “the best”; later counsel-related activity is separately documented, but the cited records do not prove that Karp accepted the offer, caused the engagement, or that Paul Weiss represented Kraft ⁹. The Melinda French Gates petition, Black assistance agreement, and Ghosn settlement document formal firm matters with different personnel and postures ¹⁰⁵⁸. The archived SoftBank biography establishes only a client-list relationship and leaves the matter, dates, scope and payer unidentified; the Caesars records establish firm work and a separate Karp-Epstein exchange without proving Karp's personal mandate ²⁵²⁶. The reviewed record leaves Kraft as an attempted-referral and later counsel-contact context rather than a proved Paul Weiss engagement ⁹.

Paul Weiss's first-party biography identifies Brad Karp as firm chair from 2008 through 2026 and as a lifelong firm lawyer who previously chaired the Litigation Department ²⁷. In March 2025, Executive Order 14237 imposed restrictions on the firm; after a meeting with Karp and announced firm commitments, Executive Order 14244 revoked the earlier order ²⁸. A later federal decision discussing the comparable Perkins Coie order characterized the Paul Weiss sequence as evidence of governmental coercive power, but it did not adjudicate the Paul Weiss order or agreement ²⁹.

On February 4, 2026, the firm announced that Scott Barshay had become chair after Karp decided to resign, while Karp would continue full-time client service ³⁰. Paul Weiss's current profile continues to identify Karp as a New York partner and records post-chair professional activity ³¹.