Professor Deborah Rhode weighs in on the “conflict of interest” the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison created for the NFL’s Deflategate case. 

When a Manhattan federal judge overturned the National Football League’s four-game suspension of star quarterback Tom Brady on Thursday, the NFL wasn’t the only losing party in the matter — its law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was also put in the hot seat.

Paul Weiss was hired by the NFL to conduct an independent investigation into the alleged improper deflation of footballs that occurred during the Jan. 18 AFC Championship between Brady’s New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts.

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Deborah Rhode, one legal ethics expert who is a law professor at Stanford Law School, said she believed Paul Weiss had a conflict of interest in representing the NFL in its dispute with Brady, while also being an independent investigator in the case.

She said, however, that the “injury (to Paul, Weiss) is mainly reputational.”

“You look at these cases, and you think, ‘What were they thinking?’” said Rhode. “I think they wanted to maintain a relationship with a very powerful client that could bring them substantial business in the future and didn’t fully consider the questions both in the fact and in appearance of partiality that a switch in roles might entail.”