Was that Davis Polk Associate Asking for It?

Ryan Powers defied the firm's orders to stop publishing political articles and got fired. Was he heroic, naive or full of himself?

Ryan Powers (screenshot from his appearance on The Parnas Perspective)

I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS about Ryan Powers, the second-year associate who was fired by Wall Street law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. Though he’s been lauded on social media and various news outlets (The Parnas Perspective and Above the Law) for standing up to Big Law and speaking truth to power, I am not quite ready to call him a hero.

Here’s what happened: According to Powers, he was fired on June 12 merely four hours after he informed the firm that he intended to publish an article about the threat to civil liberties posed by government surveillance. Just a day before, the firm warned him that his writings in various news publications had breached internal policy – a policy, he explains, that “gave the firm broad discretion to block employee speech on any topic it chose to view as relevant to its interests.” The firm offered no explanation, “only that something had been flagged, and I was expected to stop.”

He refused to comply: “I believed the issues I was raising mattered – and I rejected the idea that writing about fundamental rights and democracy was somehow wrong.” He makes a broader point: “This isn’t just about one firm. It’s about Big Law: an industry increasingly beholden to power, where employers are quietly deciding what their lawyers are allowed to say – not just in the office, but in their lives beyond it.”

OK, I’m with him so far. Powers then rails against Big Law’s hypocrisy — suppressing speech in the name of maintaining neutrality when, in fact, “the clients we serve, the cases we take, and the influence we exert make us inherently political.” I’m with him on that too. But then he cites Davis Polk’s representation of Trump Media & Technology Group on a crypto venture as Exhibit A.

That last point left me scratching my head. If Davis Polk is now representing a precious Trump interest (his crypto ventures have made $57 million so far), why would Powers think the firm would allow him to shoot his mouth off on anything remotely critical of Trump? What’s more, Powers was writing about the dangers of government surveillance and how companies like Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies, whose financial advisors Davis Polk had represented, are helping to erode individual liberty.

It’s not like Davis Polk has been subtle about its pivot towards Trump. This spring, the firm hired former Trump White House counsel Stefan Passantino to beef up its lobbying presence, and quietly scrubbed all mention of partners Greg Andres and Uzo Asonye’s roles in the Mueller investigation.

Given all that, Powers’s decision to keep publishing articles critical of Trump world under his real name (Davis Polk was never mentioned by name; Power was usually identified as a Harvard Law School graduate who works at “an international law firm”) was asking for trouble. Though his writings weren’t angry screeds, they were still jabs at MAGA. But even without the Trump factor, I wonder how many firms would tolerate a direct hit on a major client.

Powers knew what he was doing was going to piss off management. Which is why I found it a bit disingenuous when he suggested that he was caught off-guard by his firing: “I understand why they are doing what they’re doing.” he told Bloomberg Law. “At the same time, it’s very sad on a personal level because it ends my Big Law career sooner than I had anticipated and in a very different way than I had anticipated.”

Clearly, he wanted to force the issue, make a grand statement, and come off as an avatar of defiance in the face of authoritarianism. The only question is whether he pulled it off.

While I too am alarmed at how Big Law is capitulating to the Trump administration — turning its back on diversity and social justice, paying extortion money (nearly a $1 billion in free legal services) to get off his shitlist, and generally contorting itself to curry favor with Trump — I’m put off by Powers’s grandstanding. His après-firing post on Instagram shows how his ego has taken over:

Today, I’m exposing a culture of unchecked power, secret conversations, and dark money that’s long overdue for public scrutiny. Because when lawyers with the most privilege and protection are too afraid to speak, democracy dies. Not in chaos, but in comfort — behind closed doors, in shadowy back rooms, on billion-dollar yachts.

I know Davis Polk partners are taking home a tidy bundle (its profit per partner is $7.8 million) but I doubt they’re hanging out on billion-dollar yachts like Russian oligarchs. As for “exposing” Big Law’s dark side, didn’t we already know that many of the muckety-mucks of the most profitable firms in the nation will sell their own mothers to keep the money machine flowing? He also says that he wrote his articles to make the legal implications of Trump’s actions “easier to understand,” but couldn’t he have done so under a pseudonym?

I AM ON THE SAME PAGE with Power on almost all of the points he raised about the state of the legal profession and sincerely want to cheer him on. But deliberately getting himself fired then wrapping himself in the flag of victimhood strikes a false note. I know what he did takes guts and that he’s sacrificed a lot — a good salary, health insurance and security — yet his approach feels self-indulgent.

But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Perhaps I’m missing the whole point. Perhaps this kind of grandstanding is what it takes to drive home a point that needs constantly reminding — that Big Law is bending to an authoritarian leader and jeopardising the rule of law.

So is Powers heroic, naive or annoying. Well, who says he can’t be all three?

email: chen.vivia@gmail.com