From left: Kannon K. Shanmugam, Brad S. Karp, Audra J. Soloway, Susanna M. Buergel and Robert A. Atkins.

In the wake of the Great Recession, the litigation department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison became a tried-and-true destination for anyone on Wall Street with work tied to the financial collapse. For years, the firm could rely on the long tail of the crisis to provide steady business, and for years it prospered by doing so.

But as that work has waned in recent years, chair Brad Karp says, Paul Weiss had to transition to a new set of high-stakes, high-profile cases to keep its lawyers busy. The firm hasn't missed a beat.

"We've really morphed our practice," Karp says, returning to what he considers the firm's bread and butter: "When a corporation or organization faces an existential threat, who are you going to call upon to extricate you from the predicament?"

The answer, in many cases, is Paul Weiss.

For Jack Silhavy, executive vice president and general counsel at medical services company Fresenius Kabi USA, Paul Weiss' trial-ready approach made the answer an easy one. Faced with a lawsuit over its termination of a $4.8 billion merger agreement with generics manufacturer Akorn and an 11-week runway from filing to trial—not to mention an unprecedented attempt to halt a deal based on a material adverse event—Fresenius was in a tight corner.

"It was an enormously steep hill," Silhavy acknowledges.

Partners: 61 Associates: 298 Other: 145 Department as Percentage of Firm: 53% Percentage of Firm Revenue: N/A

He turned to Paul Weiss and partners Susanna Buergel, Lewis Clayton and Andrew Gordon, first to evaluate the company's rights regarding potential FDA violations by Akorn, then to engineer a long-shot result after Akorn sued over the deal's termination. Silhavy thought the case law suggested Fresenius might succeed, but, as Buergel says, "Most firms would have said you can't take it to trial."

That didn't stop Paul Weiss, which took or defended more than 50 depositions in the compressed time frame and compelled Akorn's counsel to produce damaging information about its own internal investigation along the way. In October 2018, the Delaware Court of Chancery found the termination to be justified.

"We get a litigation file, and we are immediately thinking, How do we try this case?" Buergel says. "Every fact that we develop, every subpoena we serve, every document we request, every objection to the same … is about how we want to present that case to the fact finder."

For Silhavy, the firm's tenacious approach helped deliver a victory few could have anticipated.

"I've been involved in litigation for all of my career," he says, "and I just don't know other firms that could have accomplished this."

The department accomplished plenty in the past two years, guiding ExxonMobil through a thicket of investigations and litigation tied to climate change, securing a win for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in a high-profile political clash over the public's right to information about government programs following an investigation into the state's tax incentives for businesses, and beating back antitrust claims brought by competitor Retractable Technologies Inc. against client Becton, Dickinson and Co., as well as a multibillion-dollar class action against the medical equipment giant.

For Karp, though, just as important as the firm's litigation work on behalf of paying clients is the vigor it's brought to the fight against injustice through its pro bono cases, including its role as lead counsel overseeing a committee as part of a class action over the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. That work has helped reunite more than 100 children with deported parents and aided many parents in their asylum claims.

"We have taken on every significant social impact litigation or issue that exists over the past two years—family reunification, immigrant rights, reproductive freedom, gun control, LGBTQ rights, opposing voter disenfranchisement," Karp says. "We really have been the nation's firm with a conscience."

Much like the financial crisis work helped sharpen Paul Weiss litigators' tools, the pro bono work is a learning opportunity. Every matter is another step toward the firm's goal of being trial-ready at all times, prepared to take every case the distance for clients facing existential threats.

"There's an ethic in our group that if you're a litigator, you're a trial lawyer. The two things are synonymous," Buergel says. "You can learn anything. The substantive file doesn't matter—the skills translate."

On the back of its recent success, Paul Weiss is continuing to grow its litigation department, adding high-profile lateral Kannon Shanmugam in 2019 to head a new Supreme Court and appellate litigation department, and bringing on former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Jeannie Rhee, a leader on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The firm has an "all-star team," Shanmugam says, that will help it move in a new direction even as it doubles down on its strengths.

"Litigation has always been right at the core of the firm's DNA," Shanmugam says. "At a time when many firms are backing away from their commitment to litigation, Paul Weiss remains at its heart a litigation firm."