Roberta Kaplan opens a new boutique with former prosecutors (1)

Roberta Kaplan, a veteran trial lawyer who represented New York author E. Jean Carroll in her groundbreaking trials against Donald Trump, is leaving the firm she founded seven years ago to start a new law firm with three close friends.

The attorney is leaving Kaplan Hecker & Fink to found a boutique that will focus on civil litigation, internal corporate investigations and strategic consulting, she said in a statement Wednesday. Tim Martin, another partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, is leaving with her. The new company will be called Kaplan Martin.

Kaplan Hecker & Fink’s unexpected growth to more than 100 lawyers and employees, she said, prompted Kaplan to make changes just three years after she and her colleagues celebrated the opening of an expanded office in the Empire State Building. She also said she wanted to focus less on the white-collar work that now dominates her old firm.

“It’s true that the company had grown quickly, which was great, but its size and complexity exceeded my expectations, so I wanted to get back to something more agile,” Kaplan said in an interview.

Kaplan, who won a landmark Supreme Court victory in 2013 for same-sex couples, rose to prominence thanks to Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump. In 2019, Carroll went public with her claim that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s and then sued him for defamation after he called her a liar. She then sued Trump for sexual harassment when New York temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such claims.

Kaplan won both cases. A federal jury in Manhattan found Trump liable for sexual abuse and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million. Another New York jury found Trump liable for defamation and awarded Carroll $83.3 million. Trump has appealed both verdicts.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Kaplan’s departure had been discussed within the company for many months.

The move will once again test Kaplan’s ability to bring customers with it. She said all of her clients, with one exception, followed her when in 2017 she left Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the large firm where she had worked for 25 years, to co-found Kaplan Hecker & Fink.

“Robbie’s contributions to the company are immeasurable,” Kaplan Hecker & Fink said in a statement. “We know Robbie will continue to change the world from his new position and we look forward to continuing to work together.”

In addition to Kaplan and Martin, the company’s two other founders are Steven M. Cohen and Mitra Hormozi, both of whom are former federal prosecutors with close ties to Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who left office under a cloud of sexual harassment claims.

Cohen and Martin were general counsel at Ronald Perelman’s investment firm MacAndrew & Forbes Holdings and worked closely together during their time at the firm. Hormozi was general counsel at Revlon Inc., where MacAndrew & Forbes was the largest shareholder before the cosmetics company’s 2022 bankruptcy. Last year, she earned more than $752,400 as a director at Apollo Global Management Inc.

Cohen was Cuomo’s secretary when he was governor and an adviser and chief of staff until Cuomo was state attorney general. In 2011, Cuomo appointed Hormozi to chair the Public Integrity Commission, which investigated ethics violations by public officials and lobbyists.

Kaplan’s own ties to Cuomo came back to bite her during the former governor’s harassment scandal. She left Time’s Up, an advocacy group for sexual harassment victims, in 2021 after a state investigation revealed her role in helping Cuomo fight harassment allegations, which he continues to deny.

In addition to her lawsuits against the former president, she sued a group of white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, and won the case at trial. She represented the Center for Combating Digital Hate after the nonprofit was sued by Elon Musk’s X Corp. over a report that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter “is rife with harmful content.” Kaplan won a dismissal of the case. Musk has appealed.

Not all of Kaplan’s lawsuits against Trump have been successful. In 2018, she sued Trump, his company and his three adult children on behalf of a small group of investors who claimed he lied in his presentations on The Apprentice about the multi-level marketing company. A judge denied Kaplan’s request for class-action status and dismissed the claims, leading to the case being halted in federal court.

In May, Columbia University hired Kaplan to defend a lawsuit filed by a Jewish student over the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus. In June, Columbia agreed to appoint a public safety escort program liaison by the end of the year as part of a settlement of a proposed class action lawsuit.

Cohen said he will remain a member of Blue Raven, the legal consulting firm he founded in 2020 after leaving MacAndrews. It will be incorporated into the firm as a separate arm best suited to advising independent directors of public companies.