David Boies, who turned one in every of America’s most outstanding attorneys in circumstances involving Microsoft, the 2000 U.S. presidential election and the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage, is stepping down subsequent yr as chief of the legislation agency he co-founded.
The agency’s partnership has been in tumult lately partially due to Boies’ illustration of controversial shoppers like disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.
Boies’ tenure as chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner ends December 2024, a agency spokesperson mentioned on Friday. A brand new chairman-will be chosen subsequent month, the spokesperson mentioned.
The agency mentioned the 82-year-old Boies shouldn’t be retiring and can stay a associate. Boies was not instantly accessible to remark.
Boies Schiller has misplaced almost half of its attorneys during the last three years. It now lists 180 attorneys in 13 workplaces.
The agency has altered its management construction in the identical interval, electing a number of co-managing companions because it seemed forward to a future with out its founder.
One in all them, Nicholas Gravante, departed for rival legislation agency Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2020. One other who briefly held the position, Natasha Harrison, left Boies Schiller final yr to discovered her personal agency.
Boies Schiller is now managed by a trio of managing companions, who praised Boies’ management in a press release on Friday.
“We vastly respect the religion David and the remainder of the agency has positioned in us,” companions Matthew Schwartz, Sigrid McCawley and Alan Vickery mentioned in a press release.
In 1997, the identical yr he began his agency, Boies was employed by the U.S. authorities for its landmark antitrust case towards MicrosoftMSFT.O, boosting the agency’s popularity as a litigation powerhouse.
He unsuccessfully represented Democrat Al Gore in his U.S. Supreme Courtroom struggle with George W. Bush over the 2000 election and later helped overturn California’s ban on homosexual marriage.
In recent times, he was criticized for representing Weinstein, in addition to biotechnology firm Theranos, which falsely claimed to pioneer blood checks needing minute quantities of blood, and the place Boies sat on the board.
(Reporting by David Thomas, Enhancing by David Bario and Marguerita Choy)
