The Bad, Good Lawyer

The bad, good lawyer was David Boies just doing right by Harvey Weinstein? Or did he cross an ethical line?

- Andrew Rice

One day in November 2000, David Boies was in his backyard in Westchester planting a copper-beech tree with the help of a client, a billionaire real estate developer, when he received an unexpected phone call. It was someone from Al Gore’s campaign begging him to take on the most important case in America. Gore was trying to overturn his 537-vote loss in Florida and, with it, George W. Bush’s lead in the Electoral College. Boies, a Democrat who was one of the country’s most skilled—and feared—courtroom litigators, ended up arguing Bush v. Gore all the way to the Supreme Court, losing valiantly in a decision with many fateful ramifications. For Boies, one was an introduction to a man who would become one of his most devoted clients, the movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

Within the legal profession, Boies was already a legendary figure. But Bush v. Gore gave him a taste of national celebrity. Bill Cosby cold-called to introduce his agent, who pitched him on writing a memoir. Tina Brown, who was then running the magazine Talk, pursued him as a potential author for a new, Talk-related publishing imprint. She invited Boies to lunch with her financial backers, Weinstein and his brother, Bob.

They offered Boies a substantial advance for his memoir, and before long, Boies was also acting as their legal counsel. “That’s how Harvey pursued things,” says an attorney who worked for Weinstein. “Give him a book deal and then he’d have a relationship with the greatest fucking lawyer there is.” With others, Weinstein may have acted like a crass bully, but he treated Boies with great deference, calling on him for matters large and small.