Johnson notes, “The first day I was here, Morris Abram called me up and said, ‘I see we’ve got a Morehouse man here.’ ” Abram, a leading partner at Paul, Weiss, was a trustee at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, where Johnson earned his undergraduate degree. The young associate also learned that his grandfather had worked with one of the firm’s founding partners, Lloyd Garrison, in the National Urban League. And partner Jay Topkis served on the board of directors at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “ I was really impressed by that,” Johnson says. So impressed, in fact, that he decided to make his career at Paul, Weiss. It was a good move for both: Johnson became partner in 1994, the first African American to do so.
But what’s even more notable about Johnson’s accomplishment is that it was surprisingly late for a firm whose lawyers have done so much to advance the cause of African Americans. Paul, Weiss hired its first black associate in 1949 — well before many firms in New York — but didn’t elect its first black partner for another 45 years, after a number of its peers had already done so.
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