David Boies

Background

David Boies was born in 1941 in Sycamore, Illinois, and attended Northwestern University and Yale Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal. He built his legal career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one of the preeminent Wall Street law firms, before founding Boies Schiller Flexner in 1997. His reputation as a trial attorney is built on a succession of high-profile cases.

He is perhaps best known to the general public as the attorney who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court in 2000, and as lead counsel against Microsoft in the Department of Justice antitrust case. His courtroom skills are widely acknowledged even by opponents. His firm has represented corporate clients, individual litigants, and governments in matters across civil and criminal law.

Connection to Epstein

David Boies became involved in Epstein-related litigation through his representation of Virginia Giuffre (née Roberts). Giuffre’s civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, filed under the case styled Giuffre v. Maxwell in the Southern District of New York, became one of the most significant civil proceedings in the case. Boies Schiller conducted extensive discovery in that matter, including the deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell herself, and accumulated a documentary record that became foundational to the Maxwell criminal prosecution and to subsequent document unsealing proceedings.

Boies’s most visible contribution to the Epstein victim litigation was the civil case against Prince Andrew. Following Giuffre’s filing of the complaint against Andrew in August 2021, Boies and his team aggressively litigated the matter. The case reached a settlement in February 2022, reportedly in the range of $12-16 million — one of the largest civil settlements in a case of this type.

Boies was also involved in related civil litigation against JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank on behalf of Epstein victims, contributing to the combined approximately $365 million in bank settlements.

Aftermath

The Epstein civil litigation has been among the most consequential matters of Boies’s long career in terms of public impact, even as it represents a fraction of his firm’s overall business. The documentary record his team assembled in Giuffre v. Maxwell — particularly Maxwell’s deposition, long sealed — provided critical material when Judge Loretta Preska ordered document unsealing in 2023-2024.

Boies’s involvement in the Epstein case also intersected with an earlier controversy: in 2017, it emerged that he had hired the investigative firm Black Cube to collect information about Harvey Weinstein accusers while also representing Weinstein accusers — a conflict that drew significant criticism. The Epstein representation has generally been viewed as more straightforwardly victim-side work without comparable conflicts.

He has continued practicing at Boies Schiller Flexner and remains one of the most recognizable names in American civil trial practice.