Law Firms
Davis Polk associate says he was fired after refusing to stop publishing columns on legal issues
Updated: A Davis Polk associate says he was fired four hours after presenting the law firm with a column he intended to publish on the Trump administration’s ability to track protesters.
Ryan W. Powers says he wrote the column on June 12, the day after he was told his previous newspaper columns on legal issues violated an internal policy at the law firm. The policy apparently gave the law firm wide discretion to block employee speech on topics it viewed as relevant to its interests, he says.
Many large law firms have policies similar to Davis Polk’s, according to employment lawyer Jonathan Pollard of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Lots of law firms won’t publicly talk about their content creation or publishing polices—because they know that’s a bad look,” he tells the ABA Journal in an email. “But it is widespread.”
According to University of Virginia School of Law professor J.H. (Rip) Verkerke, it is “standard practice” for law firms to bar employees from making unauthorized public comments about clients or the subject matter of any representations. Some may even prohibit speech that could harm the interests of the firm or its reputation.
“I believe, however, that it is quite unusual for a firm to interpret these policies and retained rights as a license to fire an associate for any political speech of which they disapprove,” says Verkerke, who teaches employment law, in an email. “Based on the information that is publicly available, perhaps the most likely motivation for the firm’s action was a desire to avoid offending the Trump administration.”
Powers explained what happened in a Substack article and a podcast called the Parnas Perspective. Bloomberg Law and Law360 have coverage.
Powers started writing columns for local newspapers after the Trump administration cracked down on the legal profession with executive orders targeting disfavored law firms and pressure on bar associations to change policies.
“So, I started writing—on my own time, completely outside of work,” Powers wrote. “If the law was becoming harder to trust, I figured it should at least be easier to understand.”
When he was warned about the law firm’s publishing policy, Powers wrote, “No explanation was given—only that something had been flagged, and I was expected to stop. I refused.”
Powers received the warning after writing another column on privacy issues. It concerned the dangers of unchecked federal surveillance and how companies like Palantir Technologies had built tools that could be used to profile and monitor Americans. Two weeks later, the New York Times reported that at least four federal agencies were using a Palantir product that could allow the Trump administration to merge their information, raising concerns that the government would compile a master list of personal information.
Davis Polk had represented the financial advisers to Palantir in an initial public offering.
Powers sent the column he intended to publish to three law firm leaders in an email reviewed by Law360. He wrote that if the law firm rejected his request to publish, he would like a written explanation of the reason.
“Instead of any answer,” he told the Parnas Perspective, “I got a knock on my door about four hours after the article was sent to them.” He was fired immediately and given only a few minutes to pack his personal belongings.
Powers views the Davis Polk publishing policy as ambiguous. Punishing speech without a clear explanation preserves power and silences lawyers who are “the first line of defense in a constitutional crisis,” he writes.
In his interview with the Parnas Perspective, Powers said the law firm’s publishing policy is “morally weak and poorly justified.” He believes enforcement of the policy “compromises the integrity of the institution and every attorney in it.”
“This isn’t just about one firm,” Powers wrote in his Substack article. “It’s about BigLaw: 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. When sharing legal knowledge is treated as a problem and silence becomes the expectation, the danger isn’t just to lawyers who speak up. It’s to the rule of law itself.”
Powers, a Harvard law graduate, was a tax associate who was hired at Davis Polk in October 2023.
Davis Polk is declining to comment, a spokesperson told the ABA Journal.
Story updated on July 17 at 1 p.m. to include comment from Pollard. Story updated at 3:10 a.m. on July 18 to include comment from Verkerke.
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
