Roberta Kaplan, the prominent New York attorney who successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, has left Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to form a litigation boutique.
Kaplan said she left Paul Weiss because she saw a market need for a nimble law firm where she would have more flexibility in negotiating billing rates and using flexible fee arrangements. She also said the new firm’s commitment to social justice has allowed her to attract top talent.
“I had a sense over the past five years … that the largest firms, Paul Weiss included, are having a harder and harder time in terms of business-to-business litigation,” she said. “The marketplace has changed such that a lot of the commercial litigation practice has been taken up by smaller firms,” which are doing cases that Paul Weiss would have done 20 years ago, she said.