Roberta Kaplan

Practice Areas

Appellate Litigation; Commercial Litigation; Education; Employment, Discrimination and Sexual Misconduct; Investigations and Crisis Management; Public Interest Litigation; Regulatory Enforcement and Litigation; Trials

Career

Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan is the founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP. In July 2017, Robbie founded 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. The Washington Post has described Robbie as “a brash and original strategist, with neither a gift for patience nor silence, a crusader for underdogs who has won almost every legal accolade imaginable.”

With her decades of experience in both commercial and civil rights litigation, Robbie has consistently been recognized as one of the nation’s top litigators and was named the 2020 “Lawyer of the Year” by the New York Law Journal. In addition to receiving the Gold Medal Award from the New York State Bar Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Law Journal, she has been named “Litigator of the Year” by The American Lawyer, “Lawyer of the Year” by Above the Law, “Top 10 Women in Litigation” by Benchmark Litigation, and the “Most Innovative Lawyer of The Year” by The Financial Times, among numerous other honors. As the ABA Journal has recognized, Robbie is “a specialist in emerging law. She litigates cases that shape the legal structure within which Americans live, love, work, and hail cabs.”

Robbie leads a high-stakes commercial litigation practice, representing a broad array of institutions across technology, the sharing economy, education, and finance, including Airbnb, Uber, Columbia University, Brown University, Goldman Sachs, Pershing Square Capital Management, the Democratic National Committee, and Fitch Ratings in their most high-profile and complex legal challenges. 

Robbie is known nationwide for her impactful public interest practice, having successfully 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. This victory followed the firm’s early success in winning a groundbreaking lawsuit against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who organized the racial- and religious-based violence that took place in Charlottesville in August 2017.

Robbie is perhaps best known for successfully arguing before the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor, the historic Supreme Court challenge that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and helped pave the way to nationwide marriage equality, and has continued her deep-seated commitment to using the law to advocate for LGBTQ rights. Following her victory in Windsor, Robbie successfully litigated several LGBTQ rights cases in Mississippi, including successfully challenging the City of Starkville’s denial of a permit for its first ever LGBTQ pride parade.

Robbie led the legal team that reached a historic settlement agreement with the Florida State Board of Education, Florida Department of Education, and school districts that effectively nullified the most dangerous and discriminatory impacts of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. She also led the legal team that secured a dismissal for Center for Countering Digital Hate in X Corp v. Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc et al., a lawsuit that alleged CCDH violated X’s terms of service by illegally acquiring data used in researching the prevalence of hate speech on the platform.

Robbie is a 1991 graduate of Columbia Law School, where she currently serves as an adjunct professor of law. She holds an A.B., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Harvard College.