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Roberta A. Kaplan, a prominent lawyer who took on former President Donald J. Trump and helped win marriage equality for gay Americans, has decided to resign from the law firm she founded after a conflict with a partner over the treatment of a colleague.
Ms. Kaplan, a tenacious civil rights attorney, announced that she will leave the law firm she founded in 2017, Kaplan Hecker & Fink, and start a new law firm.
Ms. Kaplan’s departure came after months of frustration within the firm about the behavior of other lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter. Those concerns led her colleagues to remove her from the firm’s management committee, which ultimately led to her departure.
“We are deeply grateful to Robbie for bringing us together,” the remaining partners of Ms. Kaplan’s former firm, which will be renamed Hecker Fink on Monday, said in an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.
“It was Robbie’s decision to leave the firm,” Julie Fink and Sean Hecker, two of the firm’s partners, 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 An interview She told Bloomberg that she was leaving along with a colleague because Kaplan Hecker & Fink had “grown larger and more complex than I expected and I wanted to return to something more nimble.”
Before she announced her departure, The New York Times notified her personal lawyer that it was planning to publish an article about Kaplan to address complaints from some employees about the unprofessional culture of the office she led. Her lawyer had no comment Wednesday evening.
News of Ms. Kaplan’s impending departure from the law firm sent shockwaves through the legal community on Wednesday as lawyers tried to make sense of the sudden departure of one of the nation’s most prominent lawyers.
Ms. Kaplan, who along with her wife has deep ties to the Democratic Party, has been a hero to many liberal activists. In addition to litigating the case before the Supreme Court that laid the groundwork for legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, she became a leader in the #MeToo movement.
Most recently, she represented author E. Jean Carroll in a defamation lawsuit against Trump that culminated in a landmark $83 million verdict Trump received this year.
Ms. Kaplan, 57, left top corporate law firm Paul, Weiss to start her own firm. When she recruited lawyers, she promised that the firm would be a different kind of high-end law firm, driven by a progressive mission and away from the macho culture so common in the industry. She said Kaplan Hecker & Fink was founded “on the principle that someone has to stand up to the bully.”
By many measures, things are thriving at Kaplan, a firm of about 60 lawyers in New York and Washington that is winning big cases and awards and bringing in revenue that rivals that of larger, older firms.
Her business opened in a restored barn in the Hamptons a few months ago, and the #MeToo movement exploded a few months later, and Ms. Kaplan quickly made it her signature issue.
A few weeks later, she announced that she was representing a woman who was sued for defamation by film director Brett Ratner, the first Legal disputes Women in the #MeToo era. She publicly stated that lawyers like her must “help women find their voices and make their voices heard in every aspect.”
Ms. Kaplan eventually became the chairwoman of Time’s Up, a celebrity-studded nonprofit that fights sexual harassment in the workplace, and co-founded its legal defense fund. Changes in the law This would make it easier for survivors to sue their attackers.
Yet despite her and her company’s many victories, some employees have grown unhappy with Ms. Kaplan’s leadership. Several people who worked with her told The New York Times that she had insulted employees, made inappropriate comments about their appearance and threatened to ruin people’s careers.
Kaplan’s lawyers denied that she had made inappropriate comments about colleagues and said her firm takes allegations of workplace misconduct seriously. They added, “Nothing could be more unusual than a trial lawyer using colorful language, criticizing his peers, and representing a variety of clients without expecting them to be of pure thought.”
In addition to complaints about how Ms. Kaplan treats colleagues, some lawyers at the firm are unhappy that some of her legal work appears to conflict with the liberal ideals Ms. Kaplan espouses.
In 2020, as then-Governor Andrew M. Cuomo faced sexual harassment allegations, he sought advice from Ms. Kaplan on how to handle the crisis. Ms. Kaplan’s role became public months later when the state attorney general released a report. Report Details of the investigation into Mr. Cuomo’s conduct were given.
The protests sparked a strong response. More than 150 victims and victims’ rights advocates signed a Open the envelope Ms. Kaplan soon resigned as chair of the Time’s Up board, accusing it of “focusing on power over mission.”
A person familiar with the dynamics within the law firm said tensions over Ms. Kaplan began around that time, though they have intensified in recent months.
Kaplan tried to persuade some colleagues to leave with her, according to two people familiar with the matter. But most refused. The overtures only exacerbated friction within the company.
“I do high-stakes, challenging work that requires both tenacity and precision,” Ms. Kaplan said in a statement to The New York Times. She added that because she has taken on “some of the biggest bullies in the world,” “it’s only natural that some people don’t like me, especially when you’re a woman. I’m proud of my record as a lawyer, colleague and mentor.”
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