NY Times: How A Trump-Beating, #MeToo Legal Legend Lost Her Law Firm

New York Times, How a Trump-Beating, #MeToo Legal Legend Lost Her Firm:

Last fall, senior partners at Kaplan Hecker & Fink, a New York law firm known for championing liberal causes, made a fateful decision: They were going to sideline their hard-charging and crusading founder, Roberta A. Kaplan.

The reign of one of the country’s most prominent lawyers was coming to an end.

Ms. Kaplan was already famous when she founded her law firm in 2017, having won a landmark Supreme Court case that paved the way for marriage equality for gay Americans. The firm soon gained national prominence because of her leadership in the #MeToo movement, and more recently for high-profile victories against white supremacists and former President Donald J. Trump.

But those triumphs couldn’t overcome an uncomfortable reality, according to people familiar with the law firm’s internal dynamics.

In the eyes of many of her colleagues, including the firm’s two other named partners, Ms. Kaplan’s poor treatment of other lawyers — ranging from micromanagement to vulgar insults and humiliating personal attacks — was impairing the boutique firm she had built, the people said. For one thing, they said, she was jeopardizing its ability to recruit and retain valuable employees.

Ms. Kaplan and other partners had also clashed over issues of management and strategy, and some of her colleagues were frustrated by the difficulties of achieving consensus with her, several people said.

Ms. Kaplan was told last fall that it had become untenable for her to remain on the firm’s management committee — a sharp rebuke for a founding partner. She agreed to step down from the committee. The decision began a monthslong chain of events that culminated this week with Ms. Kaplan’s announcement that she was leaving Kaplan Hecker to start a new firm.

The seemingly abrupt departure of a legal star — a gay woman who had become a heroic figure to many on the left for her willingness to take on powerful men like Mr. Trump and Elon Musk — stunned the legal community. But it had been years in the making, according to interviews with more than 30 current and former colleagues, clients and others.

Ms. Kaplan has tirelessly constructed a brand as the go-to lawyer for virtually every liberal cause. This year alone, she won an $83 million jury verdict against Mr. Trump for his having defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll; successfully defended researchers sued by Mr. Musk’s X Corporation; secured a settlement for people challenging the Florida law that critics nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay”; and represented President Biden’s daughter Ashley in a criminal investigation into who stole her diary.

Many former employees said they were proud of the work they had done and admired Ms. Kaplan’s fearless pursuit of big targets. But they also said the workplace environment she had presided over could be unbearable.

This went beyond normal gripes about tough bosses. Ms. Kaplan’s behavior was at times such an issue that a top lawyer at another firm who was her co-counsel in a case reprimanded her over her conduct, and a progressive legal coalition nixed her from a list of candidates for federal judgeships because of her reputation for mistreating employees, according to lawyers familiar with both episodes.

Ms. Kaplan is hardly the only high-powered attorney with a reputation for being a difficult boss. Plenty of male lawyers have engaged in comparable behavior and gotten away with it.

But Kaplan Hecker & Fink was founded on the premise that it would be a “values-driven” law firm free of the macho nastiness that historically characterized many of the country’s elite firms. Ms. Kaplan has said she created it “on the principle that there always must be someone to stand up to a bully.”

Reuters, Trump Courtroom Foe Roberta Kaplan Starts New Law Firm

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