Overview
David Boies, senior partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, is one of the most prominent trial lawyers in the United States, known for high-profile cases including Bush v. Gore and United States v. Microsoft. Beginning around 2014, Boies and his firm became deeply involved in civil litigation on behalf of Virginia Giuffre (Roberts) and other Epstein victims, filing suits that ultimately produced some of the most significant documentary evidence made public in the case.
Giuffre v. Maxwell
The most consequential case Boies handled in the Epstein matter was Giuffre v. Maxwell, filed in 2015 in the Southern District of New York. Virginia Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation after Maxwell publicly denied Giuffre’s abuse allegations and accused her of lying. The case produced hundreds of pages of deposition testimony and documentary evidence; Maxwell’s deposition in the case was among the most revealing records in the entire Epstein dossier. The case settled in 2017 for an undisclosed sum. A court-ordered unsealing of much of the file in 2019 triggered a major news cycle, and further records were unsealed in January 2024, including portions of Maxwell’s deposition and a tranche of exhibits identifying individuals named in connection with Epstein.
Conflict with Alan Dershowitz
Boies’s representation of Giuffre put him in direct conflict with Alan Dershowitz, who was named in Giuffre’s allegations. Dershowitz denied all allegations, filed countersuits, and repeatedly attacked Boies’s professional conduct in public. The feud between Boies and Dershowitz became one of the most publicized legal disputes arising from the Epstein case. Both sides filed bar complaints and allegations of misconduct; the disputes were eventually resolved through negotiated withdrawals of claims without findings of wrongdoing on either side.
Criticism and Complexity
Boies’s role attracted some criticism when it emerged that his firm had simultaneously done work for Harvey Weinstein while representing sexual abuse survivors. Critics argued this created at least an appearance of conflict, though Boies denied any actual conflict of interest. Separately, the financial terms of his representation of Giuffre—including contingency arrangements—were scrutinized in the context of the Prince Andrew settlement.
Significance
Boies’s litigation was instrumental in building a public factual record of Epstein’s network that prosecutors and journalists subsequently used. The Giuffre v. Maxwell file, in particular, contained names, documents, and sworn testimony that would otherwise have remained sealed indefinitely. His aggressive pursuit of civil discovery provided a valuable supplement to—and sometimes a precursor of—criminal investigation.