About Roberta Kaplan

A renowned litigator with decades of experience in commercial, higher education, and civil rights litigation, Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan, left Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison after 25 years to start Kaplan Hecker & Fink, seeking to build what she calls a “new fashioned, old fashioned” law firm that combines a cutting-edge civil and criminal litigation practice with a groundbreaking commitment to using the courts to serve the public interest. Chambers has described Robbie as “a modern-day legal giant. A towering intellect and a genius in court, with the instincts of a street fighter.” Robbie also has the distinction of being probably the only lawyer to have taken the deposition of former president Donald J. Trump twice in two weeks.

Robbie recently led the legal team representing writer E. Jean Carroll in her sexual battery and defamation suits against Donald Trump, securing $5 million and $83.3 million jury verdicts, respectively, on her behalf in cases where the juries reached their verdicts in under three hours.

Sharon Nelles, head of litigation at Sullivan & Cromwell, is quoted in a profile explaining that Robbie “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.” Stephen Gillers, professor at New York University School of Law, told Bloomberg Law that Robbie is “a lawyer that you don’t want to see opposing you.” Robbie’s client Mary Trump added that Robbie is “brilliant, she’s unrelenting, she can’t be intimidated and she’s not going to back down. She eats bullies for lunch.”