A former assistant to the solicitor general at the Department of Justice has returned to Paul Weiss in Washington DC.
Masha Hansford has returned to the firm as a partner after five years at the solicitor general’s office, where she argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, including cases relating to public officials’ activity on private social media accounts and the bankruptcy of hotel chain John Q. Hammons.
At Paul Weiss, Hansford will represent clients in complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals in federal and state courts for the firm, which grew revenue 32% to just over $2.6bn in 2024 according to data published by the American Lawyer.
“We are delighted to welcome back Masha,” Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp said in a statement. “Masha is an accomplished advocate who has argued some of the nation’s most consequential appeals in recent years, and her addition will enhance our ability to serve our clients on appellate issues.”
Hansford previously worked as a counsel at Paul Weiss, before which she practised at DC-based litigation firm Williams & Connolly and clerked for judges on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and on the District Court for the District of Columbia.
Her hire follows a raft of high-profile exits from Paul Weiss’s litigation team earlier this year in the wake of the firm cutting a deal with the White House to avoid punitive executive action. Prominent Democratic lawyer Karen Dunn, who had co-chaired Paul Weiss’s litigation department, left the firm in May with a team of litigators to found a boutique that has since secured more partners from the firm.
Around the same time, Damian Williams, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, left Paul Weiss for Jenner & Block, one of four firms that successfully sued the Trump administration over executive orders targeting them.
In other government hires, earlier this week, Eversheds Sutherland said it had recruited Blake Roberts from the US Commerce Department, where he had been deputy general counsel. Roberts will co-lead the firm’s congressional investigations practice.
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