Leading attorney Roberta Kaplan leaves office after clashing with colleagues

Roberta A. Kaplan, the acclaimed attorney who took on former President Donald J. Trump and helped secure marriage equality for gay Americans, is stepping down from the law firm she founded after clashing with her partners over her treatment of colleagues.

Ms. Kaplan, a passionate civil rights attorney, announced that she was leaving the law firm of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, which she founded in 2017, to start a new firm.

Her departure followed months of internal frustration over Ms. Kaplan’s behavior toward other lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter. These concerns led her colleagues to remove her from the company’s management committee and hastened her departure.

Ms. Kaplan’s former firm will be renamed Hecker Fink effective Monday. “Robbie brought us together, and we owe her a great debt of gratitude,” the firm’s remaining partners said in an internal memo seen 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 very best and look forward to working with her and her new firm in the future.”

Mrs. Kaplan chimed in an interview with Bloomberg that she left with a colleague because Kaplan Hecker & Fink “had grown in size and complexity beyond what I had envisioned, 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 shed light on complaints about what some employees called an unprofessional office culture she presided over. Her lawyers had no comment Wednesday night.

News that Ms. Kaplan would be leaving her firm spread like wildfire through the legal community on Wednesday, with attorneys trying to piece together the circumstances behind the sudden departure of one of the country’s most prominent lawyers.

Ms. Kaplan and her wife are closely associated with the Democratic Party, and she has been a heroic figure to many liberal activists. In addition to litigating the Supreme Court case that laid the foundation for the national legalization of same-sex marriage, she became a leader of the #MeToo movement.

She recently represented author E. Jean Carroll when she sued Trump for defamation, resulting in a landmark $83 million judgment against him this year.

When Ms. Kaplan, 57, left the white law firm of Paul, Weiss to start her own boutique, she recruited lawyers with the promise of a different type of high-end firm — one driven by a progressive mission and free from macho culture that characterizes the industry. She has said that Kaplan Hecker & Fink was founded “on the principle that there should always be someone to stand up to a bully.”

By many measures, Ms. Kaplan’s law firm was flourishing. Its 60 or so lawyers in New York and Washington won major cases and prestigious awards, while raking in 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 publication.

Within weeks, she announced that she was representing a woman sued by film director Brett Ratner for defamation in one of the first legal battles of the #MeToo era. She publicly believed that advocates like her should “help women make their voices heard and speak out on every front.”

Ms. Kaplan eventually became president of Time’s Up, the celebrity-studded nonprofit organization that combated sexual harassment in the workplace, and co-founded its legal defense fund. She lobbied for legal changes that would make it easier for survivors to sue their attackers.

Even as she and her company posted victories, some employees chafed at Ms. Kaplan’s leadership. Several people she worked with told The Times that she had insulted employees, made inappropriate comments about their appearance and threatened to derail people’s careers.

Lawyers for Ms. Kaplan denied that she made inappropriate comments to her colleagues and said her firm took allegations of workplace misconduct seriously, adding that “there is nothing more inconspicuous than trial lawyers who use colorful language, criticize their colleagues, and represent diverse clients with no expectation of ideological purity.”

In addition to the complaints about Ms. Kaplan’s treatment of colleagues, some lawyers at the firm were angry that some of her legal work seemed to conflict with the liberal ideals that Ms. Kaplan espoused.

When Andrew M. Cuomo, then governor of New York, faced allegations of sexual harassment in 2020, he turned to Ms. Kaplan for advice on how to tackle the crisis. Ms. Kaplan’s role became public months later when the attorney general released a statement report detailing the investigation into Mr. Cuomo’s actions.

The setback was severe. More than 150 victims and victims’ advocates signed an agreement open letter to the Time’s Up board, accusing it of prioritizing “proximity to power over mission.” Ms. Kaplan soon resigned as chairman of the board.

One person familiar with the law firm’s internal dynamics said tensions surrounding Ms. Kaplan began around that time, though they have been gathering momentum in recent months.

Ms. Kaplan tried to persuade some of her colleagues to join her, according to two people familiar with the matter. Most said no. The overtures only caused more friction within the company.

“The work I do is challenging and challenging, requiring both strength and precision,” Ms. Kaplan said in a statement to The Times. Because she has taken on “some of the biggest bullies in the world,” she added, “there are people who don’t like me, and that’s part of it, especially when you’re a woman. I am proud of my record as an attorney, colleague and mentor.”