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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEOctober 9, 2020Press ContactsTim Hirschel-Burns | 517-927-0319 | thirschelburns@Aaron Regunberg | 401-263-7770 | aaron.regunberg@?SIX HUNDRED LAW STUDENTS PLEDGE NOT TO WORK FOR LAW FIRM DEFENDING EXXON’S ROLE IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS?After new 2020 Climate Change Scorecard finds Paul, Weiss conducts more litigation exacerbating climate change than any other law firm and rates the firm an ‘F,’ law students deliver pledge signatures to firm’s NYC headquarters?Demanding that Paul, Weiss #DropExxon as a client, students chant “We won’t work for you while you work for them.”NEW YORK, N.Y. – Today, law students assembled at the Manhattan headquarters of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and hand-delivered the signatures of more than 600 law students who have pledged to boycott the firm until it drops its representation of climate polluter ExxonMobil. Alongside the pledges of students from more than 45 law schools across the country, #DropExxon campaign representatives also brought with them a copy of the 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard released last week—which assigned Paul, Weiss an ‘F’ and found it had conducted more litigation exacerbating climate change than any other firm.“Paul, Weiss’s work on behalf of climate polluters earned the firm a resounding ‘F’ on climate change,” said William Rose, a second-year student at NYU School of Law who helped deliver the pledges in Manhattan. “We won’t work for you as long as you’re working for ExxonMobil—and literally hundreds of students from your top recruitment schools have made the same pledge. If you want our generation’s talent, stop helping to destroy our generation’s future.”Today’s action comes just weeks before Paul, Weiss and other elite law firms begin interviewing students during this year’s law firm hiring cycle. Over two-thirds of the student pledges delivered today come from key law firm recruitment schools of NYU, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.In the last five years, Paul, Weiss has represented ExxonMobil in 21 cases relating to efforts to hold the oil giant accountable for climate damages. The firm’s tactics are extreme. The Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, called Paul, Weiss’s work “absurd” and “blatantly obstructionist.” With the help of Paul, Weiss, the fossil-fuel industry has defended itself by “trotting out fake experts, promoting conspiracy theories and cherry-picking evidence.” This week, the Supreme Court announced that it will review an attempt by Exxon and other major oil companies to block a climate change liability lawsuit from the city of Baltimore from moving forward in state court. Paul, Weiss represents Exxon in that case.The law students behind the petition argue that Paul, Weiss’s claims of social responsibility ring hollow when it prominently associates itself with Exxon’s history of climate science denial and plans to vastly increase its climate pollution emissions over the next five years, according to newly leaked documents. “My home state, Maryland, is particularly vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise due to its thousands of miles of shoreline,” says Amy Frieder, a second-year student at Harvard Law School. “I will not work for a firm so clearly on the wrong side of history in representing Big Oil from the Maryland Circuit Court all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”?The 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard, published by the newly formed organization Law Students for Climate Accountability, gives the firm a Climate Score of ‘F’ due to its extensive work for the fossil fuel industry. According to the Scorecard:From 2015-2019, Paul, Weiss worked on as many cases exacerbating climate change as 62 other Vault 100 firms combined.From 2015-2019, the value of fossil fuel transactions where Paul, Weiss served as legal adviser totaled over $5 billion.The law student boycott of Paul, Weiss is the latest escalation of the #DropExxon campaign. Earlier this year, the campaign caused waves throughout the legal community and earned widespread public attention when law students took the unprecedented step of disrupting posh Paul, Weiss recruiting receptions at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and the University of Michigan. The law students’ actions have compelled a response from Paul, Weiss chairman Brad Carp and support from founder Bill McKibben, United States Senator Richard Blumenthal, and March 4 Our Lives co-founder David Hogg.?Anne Tewksbury, a second-year student at NYU School of Law, highlighted the urgency felt by participating law students: “We have seen the sky turned orange and ash literally falling from the sky as climate change inflames hundreds of forest fires out west. We have to take a stand against a firm defending one of the most egregious contributors to environmental destruction.”“Our research found that Paul, Weiss worked on more litigation exacerbating climate change than any other law firm,” said Tim Hirschel-Burns, a second-year student at Yale Law School and an author of the Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard. “Too many firms are failing to take the climate crisis seriously, but Paul, Weiss is among the worst of the worst.”The organizers of this action plan to continue collecting pledges among their classmates, confronting Paul, Weiss attorneys at speaking events, and recruiting new first-year law students to put even more pressure on Paul, Weiss to #DropExxon as a client. They also plan to circulate the 2020 Law Firm Climate Change Scorecard to law students across the country ahead of the recruiting season for law student summer associate positions. Law firms earning higher ratings on the scorecard see their status as a valuable asset, with firms such as Wilson Sonsini and Cozen O’Connor trumpeting their ‘A’ ratings on the eve of student interviewing season.“Paul, Weiss’s work to shield corporate polluters from accountability hasn’t stopped,” said Aaron Regunberg, a second-year student at Harvard Law School and one of the #DropExxon organizers. “And neither will we.”The full text of the pledge letter can be read here.### ................
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