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Davis Polk affiliate says he was fired after…
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Davis Polk affiliate says he was fired after refusing to cease publishing columns on authorized points
By Debra Cassens Weiss
July 17, 2025, 11:56 am CDT
Up to date: A Davis Polk affiliate says he was fired 4 hours after presenting the regulation agency with a column he supposed to publish on the Trump administration’s capability to trace protesters.
Ryan W. Powers says he wrote the column on June 12, the day after he was informed his earlier newspaper columns on authorized points violated an inside coverage on the regulation agency. The coverage apparently gave the regulation agency huge discretion to dam worker speech on subjects it considered as related to its pursuits, he says.
Many giant regulation companies have insurance policies just like Davis Polk’s, in accordance with employment lawyer Jonathan Pollard of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Numerous regulation companies gained’t publicly speak about their content material creation or publishing polices—as a result of they know that’s a nasty look,” he tells the ABA Journal in an electronic mail. “However it’s widespread.”
Powers defined what occurred in a Substack article and a podcast referred to as the Parnas Perspective. Bloomberg Regulation and Law360 have protection.
Powers began writing columns for native newspapers after the Trump administration cracked down on the authorized career with government orders focusing on disfavored regulation companies and strain on bar associations to vary insurance policies.
“So, I began writing—by myself time, fully exterior of labor,” Powers wrote. “If the regulation was changing into tougher to belief, I figured it ought to no less than be simpler to grasp.”
When he was warned in regards to the regulation agency’s publishing coverage, Powers wrote, “No clarification was given—solely that one thing had been flagged, and I used to be anticipated to cease. I refused.”
Powers acquired the warning after writing one other column on privateness points. It involved the hazards of unchecked federal surveillance and the way corporations like Palantir Applied sciences had constructed instruments that might be used to profile and monitor People. Two weeks later, the New York Occasions reported that no less than 4 federal companies have been utilizing a Palantir product that would permit the Trump administration to merge their info, elevating considerations that the federal government would compile a grasp listing of private info.
Davis Polk had represented the monetary advisers to Palantir in an preliminary public providing.
Powers despatched the column he supposed to publish to 3 regulation agency leaders in an electronic mail reviewed by Law360. He wrote that if the regulation agency rejected his request to publish, he would love a written clarification of the explanation.
“As a substitute of any reply,” he informed the Parnas Perspective, “I received a knock on my door about 4 hours after the article was despatched to them.” He was fired instantly and given just a few minutes to pack his private belongings.
Powers views the Davis Polk publishing coverage as ambiguous. Punishing speech and not using a clear clarification preserves energy and silences attorneys who’re “the primary line of protection in a constitutional disaster,” he writes.
In his interview with the Parnas Perspective, Powers stated the regulation agency’s publishing coverage is “morally weak and poorly justified.” He believes enforcement of the coverage “compromises the integrity of the establishment and each legal professional in it.”
“This isn’t nearly one agency,” Powers wrote in his Substack article. “It’s about BigLaw: an business more and more beholden to energy, the place employers are quietly deciding what their attorneys are allowed to say—not simply within the workplace, however of their lives past it. When sharing authorized information is handled as an issue and silence turns into the expectation, the hazard isn’t simply to attorneys who communicate up. It’s to the rule of regulation itself.”
Powers, a Harvard regulation graduate, was a tax affiliate who was employed at Davis Polk in October 2023.
Davis Polk is declining to remark, a spokesperson informed the ABA Journal.
Story up to date on July 17 at 1 p.m. to incorporate remark from Pollard.
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