Groundbreaking New Boutique Hires Legal Wunderkind

Will this hot new boutique become the destination of choice for prominent progressive lawyers?

Joshua Matz (via Take Care)

In July, when legendary litigator Roberta A. Kaplan left the partnership of Paul, Weiss to launch her own litigation boutique, she made clear she was in the market for legal talent. She told me she expected her new firm, Kaplan & Company, to have a dozen or more lawyers onboard by the fall.

Fall doesn’t start until next week (the pleasantly cool weather notwithstanding), but Kaplan’s firm is already nine lawyers strong. And the newest addition to the team, joining the firm this week, is quite the catch.

We don’t write too much about lateral moves below the partner level (and even then we’re pretty choosy), but Joshua Matz, joining Kaplan & Company as Of Counsel, is no ordinary young lawyer. He is, without exaggeration, one of the leading legal minds of his generation. As I’ve written previously in these pages:

Recognized in 2015 as one of Forbes’s top 30 lawyers and policymakers under 30, Matz is nothing short of a legal genius (even by SCOTUS clerk standards). How many young lawyers can claim the honor of co-authoring a critically acclaimed book on constitutional law (affiliate link) with Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, an intellectual leader of the legal left?

Tribe and Matz are working on a timely follow-up offering to the award-winning Uncertain Justice, entitled To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment. It’s of a piece with Matz’s other major outside activity: Take Care, the website he launched back in March to provide real-time analysis of legal developments out of the Trump administration.

Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan (via Kaplan & Company)

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In light of Kaplan & Company’s emphasis on progressive public-interest work — Robbie Kaplan famously won United States v. Windsor, the history-making Supreme Court case that paved the way for marriage equality — the firm is a perfect home for someone like Joshua Matz. As Kaplan put it: “Joshua Matz and Kaplan & Company share the same values and commitment to advancing the public interest. Joshua truly is a walking, talking, one-man encyclopedia with deep knowledge and wisdom about the grave and pressing constitutional issues facing our nation in these troubling times. We are thrilled to have him join us at our firm.”

Kaplan is absolutely right about Matz being a “walking, talking, one-man encyclopedia” of constitutional law. As I know from having spent time with him, Matz’s ability to recall the holdings of even obscure SCOTUS cases is positively Rain Man-esque (but Matz, unlike Raymond Babbitt, is actually charming and personable too).

For his part, Matz sounds thrilled to be joining up with Kaplan. “Kaplan & Company offers a compelling new vision of the law firm environment — one that matches peerless advocacy with genuine respect for its lawyers and staff,” he said. “As the legal profession evolves in this uncertain era, the time has come for a law firm steeped in humane values and one committed to making the world a better place.”

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2012, Matz clerked for high-powered judges at all three levels of the federal judiciary: Judge J. Paul Oetken (S.D.N.Y.), Judge Stephen Reinhardt (9th Cir.), and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Matz then joined another great litigation boutique, the Washington-based Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber. He will continue to work, in an of-counsel capacity, with a third leading boutique: Gupta Wessler, the D.C.-based firm led by Deepak Gupta, the star of the legal left who’s taking on Trump, bigly. Gupta Wessler and Matz are currently working together on CREW v. Trump and District of Columbia v. Trump, aka the Emoluments Clause lawsuits.

Congratulations to Joshua Matz on joining a great team, and congratulations to Kaplan & Company on a marquee hire. The firm is just a few months old, but it’s already well on its way to becoming the destination of choice for prominent progressive lawyers.

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UPDATE (1:21 p.m.): Kaplan & Company has announced Matz’s hiring in a press release, which we’ve posted in full on the next page.

Earlier:


DBL square headshotDavid Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.