NEW YORK, NY, November 20, 2020 – Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP is delighted to announce that founding partner Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan was named 2020 Attorney of the Year at the New York Law Journal’s annual New York Legal Awards ceremony. The Attorney of the Year award recognizes the lawyer who has had the most profound effect on the law or legal community over the past year or who did the most to advance the cause of justice. 

New York Law Journal highlighted the breadth of Kaplan’s recent achievements in its finalist profile, noting that “in the past four years alone, she’s founded her own litigation boutique, Kaplan, Hecker & Fink, helped to launch the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to help women facing workplace sexual harassment and represented clients from Airbnb and Uber to counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., and a woman who has accused the president of rape.” In Tuesday’s evening’s ceremony, the presenter cited the “level of importance to this country” of Kaplan’s work this year, and noted that she “exemplified what we are looking for in an Attorney of the Year winner.”

Kaplan’s longtime peer, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP partner Sharon Nelles, described Kaplan as someone who “just sees things from a thousand different angles all at once, it’s hard to keep up with her thought processes. She knows her law cold, she knows the Constitution cold and she’s not afraid, if she sees a problem, to go figure out some law that’s going to allow her to fix it. She’ll find it.”

In her acceptance speech, Kaplan remarked: “Whatever your politics, we are all united in our shared conviction that our legal system, and the rights and protections that it offers people, is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of our democracy.”

Kaplan was honored as a finalist alongside Barry Berke, partner and co-chair of the litigation department at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, and Steven Warnke, partner at Ropes & Gray LLP. The finalists were chosen by judges Sheila Boston, partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP; Mark Lebovitch, partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP; and Joel Cohen, senior counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP. 

Read New York Law Journal’s profile of Kaplan here and the announcement of her win here. Watch Kaplan’s speech accepting the award here.