Roberta A. Kaplan, the celebrated lawyer who took on former President Donald J. Trump and helped win marriage equality for gay Americans, is stepping down from the law firm she founded after clashing to her partners about the way she treated her colleagues.
Ms. Kaplan, a civil rights lawyer, announced that she was leaving the firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink, which she founded in 2017, to start a new one.
Her departure follows months of internal frustration over Ms. Kaplan’s conduct toward other lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter. These concerns led her colleagues to remove her from the cabinet’s management committee and precipitated her departure.
Ms. Kaplan’s former company will be renamed Hecker Fink starting Monday. “Robbie brought us together and for that we owe him our gratitude,” the firm’s remaining partners said in an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.
“It was Robbie’s decision to leave the firm,” the firm’s two named partners, Julie Fink and Sean Hecker, said in a statement. “We wish her the best and look forward to working with her and her new firm in the future.”
Ms. Kaplan said in a meeting with Bloomberg that she was leaving with a colleague because Kaplan Hecker & Fink had grown “in size and complexity beyond what I had in mind and I wanted to get back to something more nimble.”
Her departure was announced after the Times informed her personal lawyers that it was preparing to publish an article about Ms. Kaplan that would highlight complaints about what some employees saw as an unprofessional office culture over which she presided . His lawyers had no comment Wednesday evening.
News of Ms. Kaplan’s departure from her firm ricocheted through the legal community on Wednesday, as lawyers tried to understand the circumstances behind the abrupt departure of one of the nation’s most prominent attorneys.
Ms. Kaplan and her wife are deeply connected to the Democratic Party, and she has been a heroic figure to many liberal activists. In addition to arguing before the Supreme Court that laid the groundwork for the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, she became a leader in the #MeToo movement.
Most recently, she represented the writer E. Jean Carroll when she sued Mr. Trump for defamation, resulting in a historic $83 million verdict against him this year.
When Ms. Kaplan, 57, left the corporate law firm Paul Weiss to start her own boutique, she recruited lawyers with the promise of a different kind of high-end firm, driven by a progressive, free from all liability. the typical macho culture of the industry. She said Kaplan Hecker & Fink was founded “on the principle that there must always be someone to stand up to a bully.”
In many ways, Ms. Kaplan’s business was successful. Its approximately 60 lawyers in New York and Washington were winning major cases and prestigious awards while earning salaries that rivaled those of much larger and older law firms.
When the #MeToo movement erupted, months after her business opened in a restored barn in the Hamptons, Ms. Kaplan quickly made it a signature.
A few weeks later, she announced that she was representing a woman sued by director Brett Ratner for defamation in one of the first legal battles of the #MeToo era. She has publicly stated that lawyers like her must “help women speak out and speak out on all fronts.”
Ms. Kaplan eventually became president of Time’s Up, a celebrity nonprofit that fights sexual harassment in the workplace, and co-founded its legal defense fund. She put pressure for legal changes this would make it easier for survivors to sue their attackers.
Even as she and her company racked up victories, some employees grew angry with Ms. Kaplan’s leadership. Several people she worked with told the Times that she insulted employees, commented inappropriately on their appearance and threatened to derail their careers.
Kaplan’s lawyers have denied making inappropriate comments to colleagues and said her firm takes allegations of workplace misconduct seriously. They added that “there is nothing more commonplace than litigators using colorful language, criticizing their peers and representing diverse clients without any expectation of ideological purity.”
In addition to complaints about Ms. Kaplan’s treatment of her colleagues, some lawyers at the firm were unhappy that some of her legal work appeared to conflict with the liberal ideals Ms. Kaplan espoused.
In 2020, when Andrew M. Cuomo, then the governor of New York, faced allegations of sexual harassment, he turned to Ms. Kaplan for advice on how to deal with the crisis. Ms. Kaplan’s role became public a few months later when the state attorney general issued a report detailing the investigation into Mr. Cuomo’s actions.
The reaction was intense. More than 150 victims and victim advocates signed a open letter to the Time’s Up board of directors, accusing her of prioritizing “her proximity to power over her mission.” Kaplan promptly resigned as board chair.
A person familiar with the law firm’s internal dynamics said tensions around Ms. Kaplan began around that time, although they have escalated in recent months.
Ms. Kaplan tried to persuade some of her colleagues to leave with her, according to two people familiar with the matter. Most said no. These overtures only added to the friction within the company.
“My job is high-stakes and demanding, requiring both tenacity and precision,” Ms. Kaplan said in a statement to The Times. As she has faced “some of the biggest bullies in the world,” she added, “there are people who don’t like me, which is part of the job, especially when you’re a woman.” I am proud of my journey as a lawyer, colleague and mentor. »
