Over a five-hour dinner at La Grenouille in Manhattan, the well-known trial lawyer David Boies found himself advocating yet again. This time, it wasn't on behalf of a client.
He was there to set the record straight about a longtime business partner whose reputation had come under fire following a slew of attorney departures from their litigation firm, Boies Schiller Flexner.
Sipping a vodka and orange juice from a corner seat, wedged between a reporter and publicist, Boies went from smiling warmly and recounting tales of a dear friend to flashing an icy glare as he rebutted allegations about his partner's behavior.
"I'm not oblivious," Boies said. "But two things: I take it all into the context of his virtue. And the more complicated picture."
Boies, who is 80, was responding to a series of workplace allegations directed at his colleague of more than 25 years, Jonathan D. Schiller, who had helped build and institutionalize their firm.
To the fascination of friends and enemies in the legal profession, the firm recently sustained an exodus that cut its attorney roster from 350 at its peak to 175 today. Those who left included many lawyers Boies and Schiller once groomed to be the firm's future leaders.
Some of those who exited had been wary of a reputational stain on Boies, who faced public outrage for his role in defending Harvey Weinstein in the lead-up to sex-abuse revelations that sparked a nationwide reckoning.
Others were concerned by how the firm paid attorneys and what they felt had been a lack of transparency into management decisions.
But what has gone unreported is the extent to which Schiller, who had long worked in Boies' shadow and was virtually unknown to the general public, shared blame for the firm's cultural turmoil, according to interviews with more than 20 of his former colleagues.
Some of these people said Schiller alienated colleagues, who became frustrated with what they considered to be his temperamental management style. They claimed he berated subordinates, condescended to peers, and sought to control client relationships others thought were theirs.
Others said Schiller irritated attorneys by taking credit and receiving pay for clients he brought into the firm years ago, even though other attorneys later handled those clients — the result of a compensation system he helped administer.
And then there was his son Josh.
A repeat party to disputes between lawyers, Josh's employment bred resentment among colleagues who thought that his rise was not based on merit, but because of his father, who promoted his practice throughout the firm and worked with him on client matters.
Jonathan Schiller talks to the press outside a San Francisco federal courthouse in 2001. Reuters Show less 
David Boies at the Supreme Court in 2013. Carolyn Kaster/AP Show lessBoies, who often caught wind of his colleagues' griping, pushed for nuance over the noise of live jazz as one drink turned into several at La Grenouille.
Pausing between sentences as he chose his words, Boies said he saw Schiller as a man of great enthusiasm — someone who could easily get amped up about a colleague's success as much as he could stew in their failure.
"His heart is good," said Boies.
"This is a guy who, 50 years ago, was a community organizer in Washington, D.C. He's not an entitled guy."
The reason Schiller was the topic of conversation at one of Boies's favorite restaurants traces back to this past fall, when sources revealed that Nicholas Gravante, a former co-managing partner at Boies Schiller, was frustrated with Schiller's involvement in management before Gravante departed for Cadwalader in December 2020.
The insight was shared by two people familiar with Gravante's thinking, one of whom pointed to a video conference call that took place during the COVID-19 lockdowns, in which Gravante logged off as soon as Schiller logged on.
"That is literally how bad their relationship was," said this person, who participated in the call. He noted, along with several others, that Gravante and Schiller had butted heads for years.
Colleagues perceived Gravante, who was friends with Boies and counted the real-estate firm the Related Companies among his clients, to be competitive with Schiller, in part because he viewed himself as a natural successor to Boies.
Insider later spoke with other Schiller colleagues, some of whom agreed that he could be a drag on firm morale. Several people shared the contents of internal emails that they felt illustrated how tone-deaf Schiller could be.
One notable exchange came in July 2020, when a top lawyer at Barclays informed Boies Schiller that it would be taking its legal work elsewhere, in part because the attorneys who had been handling its cases had joined other firms.
Natasha Harrison, another co-managing partner, wrote to Schiller that she would write a note to Barclays in a bid to salvage the business.
Schiller replied, "Dear Natasha, what kind of note might that be; you are fairly new to Barclays following my introduction? I shall help shape it."
Schiller went on to explain to Harrison why he should be involved, pointing out that much of the firm's work for Barclays took place in the US, not the UK, where Harrison was based. "Please send nothing to Barclays in which we, MPs, have not consulted," Schiller wrote, referring to the firm's managing partners.
The email was a mere glimpse of how Schiller's attitude could sometimes affect colleagues. Harrison was taken aback and didn't think that his tone was particularly constructive, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. She is now leaving Boies Schiller to set up her own firm, though she told Insider that the email didn't lead to her decision to step away from firm management.
Schiller declined multiple requests for an interview. Instead, he tapped crisis-PR expert Mike Sitrick, who provided emailed statements in response to Insider's questions and allegations made by former colleagues.
Regarding the Barclays email, Schiller said that, taken in context, his email exchange with Harrison was conversational and quite positive.
Schiller pushed back on allegations about his workplace conduct, disputing that he ever administered pay unfairly or gave preferential treatment to his son, and he objected to Insider's use of anonymous sources.
Schiller also rejected as "false" some people's assertions that he routinely shouted at attorneys and made some colleagues cry.
"If that occurred, it was certainly not my intent," Schiller wrote in a statement. "That is not who I am."
To understand Schiller, you have to go back to a playground basketball court in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where he played pickup games on the weekends in his college years, according to a Q&A in the trade publication Law Dragon.
People who know Schiller say he is one of the most competitive people they've met, with his early passion for sports following him throughout his career.
He went to college at Columbia University and played on a basketball team that won the Ivy League championship in 1968. The experience left a mark on the man, who, at 6-foot-5, with gray hair and a booming voice, likes to draw analogies between sports and law.
Jonathan Schiller, Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger in 2017. Schiller chaired Columbia board of trustees from 2013 to 2018. Photo by Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Show less 
Dr. Allan Schwartz, Jonathan Schiller, and Dr. P. Roy Vagelos at the same 2017 gala. Schwartz has been Schiller's cardiologist, and his son Matt Schwartz is a partner at Boies Schiller. Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Show less
Lou Briskman, the former general counsel of CBS and Westinghouse, said Schiller is known for outhustling opponents. "He has to finish first," said Briskman, who continues to socialize with Schiller, recently teeing off with him at East Hampton Golf Club.
Schiller's scrappiness could also be explained by his roots, some said. As much as he likes wearing fine suits and socializing in the Hamptons, people said his own upbringing lacked the financial backing that some corporate lawyers enjoy.
Schiller's father spent his career with the Securities and Exchange Commission and his mother practiced law at Legal Aid Society, at one point representing women whose daughters had become pregnant and were thrown out of public schools, according to Law Dragon.
Schiller told Law Dragon that both of his parents had a big influence on him and he liked to show off a photo of his father displayed in the SEC's reception area.
"I often ask, 'May I show you my dad's history with the commission?'" he said of his visits with the agency on behalf of his clients. "I'm from an SEC family."
Like his parents, Schiller took up causes. One summer at Columbia, he assisted farmers led by Cesar Chavez during the California lettuce strike. He also won a grant to teach New York police officers basic Spanish skills so they could communicate with residents of Spanish Harlem.
Later, while practicing law in the 1980s, Schiller handled a lawsuit in the Georgia town of Milledgeville, where, as he discovered, the mayor and police chief had secretly conspired with the textile company J.P. Stevens to suppress union organizing.
But even with all his accolades, Schiller didn't carry the same pedigree as Boies when they cofounded their firm in 1997.
Boies, whose legend was already forming, held credentials from Cravath, Swaine & Moore, long considered the pinnacle of prestige in the legal profession. Schiller spent his formative years at a small firm and then managed the Washington, D.C., office of Kaye Scholer.
"Jonathan was self-made," said one former colleague.
Others thought he was plagued by insecurity.
While Schiller's competitive nature could create friction with colleagues, it also helped him become one of the biggest business generators at Boies Schiller, establishing his perch as one of its top two rainmakers year in and year out, often behind Boies himself, according to people who have seen the firm's annual financial records.
Among the clients he helped secure were Barclays, Apple, and Qwest Communications.
"He would use his energy, his aggressiveness, and use David when he needed to," said one former colleague. "He built relationships out of nothing."
Schiller also took a strong interest in shaping the firm's brand, personally overseeing a redesign of its website, creating a firm logo, and obsessing over the color scheme displayed on its custom-made coffee mugs.
It wasn't long, however, before colleagues observed a darker side to Schiller's drive.
Some attorneys who worked at the firm in the early 2000s said they avoided working with him because they had heard he would denigrate underlings and exert his dominance in meetings.
Three former firm attorneys told Insider that during this time frame, Schiller lashed out at an associate over a subpoena in a case involving Calvin Klein. But in doing so, he yelled at the wrong associate, confusing him with someone else, they said. The story later became fodder for attorneys commiserating about Schiller's temper.
Many of his colleagues — even those who were his friends — referred to Schiller as an "asshole." And for years, it was accepted as a personality trait that made him feared by some colleagues but valued by clients who felt secure having him on their side.
Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees, told Insider that Schiller kept opponents in check when representing him in various litigation matters. Schiller has long advised the baseball club, including in a lawsuit that objected to the construction of Yankees stadium.
"He has been strong with people who are trying to depose me who have gone over the top or out of line," Levine said.
"He can be very forceful, but not obnoxious," he added.
Some colleagues, however, shared examples of his unpleasantness over the years, while requesting anonymity for fear of retribution.
One recurring theme was Schiller's email etiquette, which former colleagues said became so legendary that some people created a rule not to email him in the evenings, afraid that his response would be especially temperamental.
Other times, sources said that Schiller's explosiveness was apparent in person — and the blast radius touched both partners and associates.
In 2010, for instance, when an associate struggled to transcribe notes Schiller took in court, he called her "the highest-paid secretary at the firm" and told her she wasn't doing a great job, according to the then-associate, who confirmed the story after Insider heard about it from her friend. She said she later burst into tears at her desk and that the event is still seared into her memory.
Years later, in 2017, Schiller socialized at a D.C. recruiting event for summer associates.
While conversing in a group of lawyers, one partner said she was looking forward to attending a reception at the firm's new San Francisco office. Schiller openly rejected the idea, saying that she didn't bring in enough business to merit attendance, according to a person who was present. The attorney subsequently cried in front of others, according to this person.
In recent years, Schiller's perceived slights could be more subtle.
One former partner, Chris Belelieu, sometimes faced criticism from Schiller and didn't like feeling belittled, according to people who know both men. One person recalls a firm retreat in or around 2018 where David Boies addressed lawyers in a Ritz Carlton banquet hall. Schiller approached a table of lawyers where Belelieu sat and, in front of others, told him to face the dais, the person said.
"That pissed Belelieu off so much," said this person, who witnessed Schiller's interactions with Belelieu.
Belelieu generally tried to avoid Schiller, people who know him said. He left to join a rival law firm in 2020 and brought work for Boies Schiller client Perella Weinberg with him.
Schiller called the first two of these anecdotes "false," denying that he ever called anyone the "highest-paid secretary." When it came to transcribing notes, he said he would use his assistant of 16 years. And as for the San Francisco office opening, he said the firm decided that cross-country travel to attend the event would be limited to lawyers with clients in Northern California.
He did not comment on his interaction with Belelieu.
The unflattering anecdotes sit on one end of a spectrum of experiences attorneys shared with Insider. Some people who held some of the longest relationships with Schiller said that he was full of contradictions — he could be warm and kind but also cutting and cold.
Jonathan Sherman, a current Boies Schiller partner, described in an eight-page letter how Schiller let him take on courtroom responsibilities on behalf of Qwest Communications in the late 2000s and approved his requests to take trips all over the world to develop clients.
He also recalled how he had undergone a life-threatening surgery in 2002 — two years after joining the firm — and spent a month in a coma. More than anyone else at the firm, it was Schiller who checked in on him and offered assurance that his job would be waiting for him after a year off work, he said.
When he did come back, Schiller introduced him to the firm's equity partners, telling them at a dinner that Sherman was "one of the toughest guys I know." "When he gets knocked down, he gets right back up," Schiller said, according to the letter.
Even lawyers who criticized Schiller also acknowledged his virtues, with one lawyer saying that he accepted what he perceived to be Schiller's flaws because he is an imperfect human being "just like the rest of us." Another said that one of Schiller's recent birthday parties, at the top of the World Trade Center building, drew a crowd of prominent attorneys.
"There were many very warm speeches and toasts about him," this person recalled. "A lot of people went to that party."
Some of the early signs that attorney sentiment began to shift away from Schiller came in the late 2010s, when the firm experienced what many considered to be a public-relations crisis stemming from Boies' role as Harvey Weinstein's longtime lawyer.
Weinstein had been accused of sexual assault by women who told their stories to The New York Times. The Times later fired Boies Schiller as its outside legal team when it learned that Boies had hired private investigators on Weinstein's behalf in an attempt to kill the paper's story.
Boies told reporters that he regretted hiring the private investigators, which he said he didn't personally oversee. He also said that The Times had signed paperwork allowing his firm to take on other clients with competing interests.
Within Boies Schiller, lawyers grew concerned about the ramifications of the very public Times firing, fearing that other clients might drop them as well. Schiller was one of several partners who stepped in to quell the angst. In a pep talk to New York City attorneys, he told the office that Boies had done nothing wrong. But his remarks fell flat, according to one associate who attended.
"Gross," the associate wrote to a colleague at the time.
Another partner, Andrew Michaelson, later addressed the office, and attorneys were more open in expressing their concerns about the situation, according to this person. Schiller, by contrast, didn't appear interested in listening, the attendee said.
"It wasn't that he was holding a meeting with us to educate himself," he said. "It was a box he wanted to check to say, 'We have now all talked and you understand why this isn't a problem.' It wasn't like he was going to be convinced that this was a big deal."
Schiller could have a difficult time connecting with audience members during speeches, according to former firm lawyers. And some cringed to see him take the microphone away from certain partners who gave speeches about their work at firm events. Schiller was often in charge of making sure that the agenda ran on time, but the abruptness with which some said he cut speakers off struck them as careless.
"It was demoralizing," said one person who observed it.
Failure to read the room was one of Schiller's key shortcomings. And it manifested itself in more ways than his speechmaking, former partners said. Frustrations also bubbled up among some partners who thought that their practices were inhibited by either him or his son.
Tall and handsome like his father, Josh Schiller had long contemplated a career at Boies Schiller. As a college student, he had told his father about an internet music service called Napster, which led the firm to represent the company in the recording-industry's efforts to shutter it. And in 2008, the firm hired him as an associate after he graduated from Columbia Law School.
It wasn't uncommon for friends and family members of Boies and Schiller to work at the firm. But Josh's employment irked some colleagues because they thought he came across as entitled, often referring to "dad" in conversations, flying first-class while other associates flew coach, and making partner in just six years, two years quicker than the norm.
Some took to calling him "Baby Schiller'' behind his back and discussed their perceptions of how Josh was the beneficiary of his father's favoritism.
Josh, on the other hand, couldn't see things more differently. He told Insider he was one of the firm's top 12 business generators since he was an associate and that he earned everything he received at the firm by way of opportunities. If anyone held reservations about his references to "dad," they never expressed it to either him or Jonathan, he said.
He loved his father and didn't feel ashamed to work at the same firm as him. And as for any complaints about his selection of in-flight seating, Josh said he enjoyed the extra legroom because of his 6-foot-5 height and didn't recall ever flying first-class while an associate flew coach.
The clear difference of opinion between Josh and some of his colleagues created fault lines between him and others, even if he didn't know it.
A handful of associates got especially worked up when they found out that he landed a plum role in fighting to overturn the ban on gay marriage in California, a case that gay and lesbian attorneys at the firm would have loved to work on, according to conversations with two of them.
These attorneys and others thought Josh was not a particularly good fit for the case. For example, one of these attorneys, a gay associate, said that he had a bad experience with Josh at a 2009 circus-themed retreat in Jamaica.
During one portion of the event, the associate said a fortune teller told him she saw the military in his future. Josh laughed snidely and replied that this would be impossible, according to the associate. "He's gay!" Josh said, according to the associate, who felt humiliated by the comment.
Josh told Insider he has no recollection of this and pointed to his history of fighting for gay rights. He also said that he was against the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allowed the military to discriminate against and harass members of the LGBTQ community.
Jonathan defended Josh as well, saying that he believed Josh's comment at the retreat was mistaken. And friends wrote to Insider, too, pointing to his work in helping to make the Boy Scouts of America more inclusive for the LGBTQ community.
"I have never laughed 'snidely' in my life," said Josh. "Nor would I make a 'snide' remark about someone being gay."
Josh's reputation at the firm took another hit in November 2017, following an incident at the Roxy Hotel in New York.
He went to the bar with colleagues after a day in court. While there, a female associate expressed disdain for the firm's work representing Harvey Weinstein, according to a person who was there. Josh drew close to her, challenged her comments, and repeatedly used the word "rapist" in a way that made the associate uncomfortable, according to this person.
One lawyer who witnessed the exchange wrote to the associate afterward, telling her that they were "deeply troubled" by what happened and that she deserved to be "treated with respect."
In Josh's recollection of events — as well as those of his colleague Ben Margulis — he had a disagreement with the associate about whether Boies should step down or leave the firm. And at one point in the conversation, he said that the firm's lawyers are not all guilty by association for representing a rapist. Josh did not believe he said anything inappropriate, but said everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Some partners believed Josh did act inappropriately and felt he should face disciplinary action. At the time, Jonathan expressed his view to some partners that he didn't think the event should destroy Josh's career at the firm, according to two people who were involved in the discussions. Jonathan denies having said this, and said he recused himself from the matter.
"He knew the facts and ... if anything, was merely correcting the record," Josh told Insider.
Some lawyers said they were told that Josh would be separated from the associate's work and that he would take an administrative leave of absence.
Neither of those things happened, according to Josh.
By that point, even senior partners had a hard time coexisting with Josh. Rather than perceiving him as a valuable asset to their practices, they saw him as an impediment to their efforts to develop and maintain client relationships.
One example involved attorney Karen Dunn, a former advisor to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who had pitched Starbucks for legal work only to find that Josh was handling a trademark-infringement lawsuit against the coffee company. The conflict of interest shut the firm out of potential representation and frustrated some partners, who thought they had a real shot at securing Starbucks as a client.
Jonathan told Insider that the trademark lawsuit was quickly resolved and that the attorneys were encouraged to pursue Starbucks after the resolution. But the fact that the firm had taken on the lawsuit in the first place — for a small Brooklyn coffee shop no less — left some attorneys peeved, saying that corporations have long memories when it comes to lawyers who have sued them.
Not only was Josh behind a lawsuit they thought was bad for business, but he also became a headache to some partners who felt they had to tiptoe around Josh's personal connections in order to do their jobs.
In October 2017, for example, Travis LeBlanc, the former chief of the Federal Communications Commission, thought he would meet with one of his friends at Salesforce, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
LeBlanc wrote an email to Josh to give him a friendly heads-up, knowing that he had advised the company in the past.
Instead of offering LeBlanc support, Josh responded by CC'ing his father and David Boies, and, in a series of angry emails, told LeBlanc that Salesforce was his client, that he was offended by LeBlanc's note, and that LeBlanc and his colleagues were out of control, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange.
Taken aback by Josh's response, LeBlanc tabled the meeting with his friend, according to the people.
Karen Dunn, former advisor to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, left Boies Schiller for Paul Weiss in 2020. Phillip Faraone/Getty Images Show less 
Travis LeBlanc, former FCC enforcement bureau chief, left Boies Schiller for Cooley in late 2018. Zach Gibson/Getty Images Show less
Josh told Insider he was frustrated that a colleague would reach out to a "longtime client" without discussing the matter with him first. And he was concerned that such communication could be "embarrassing," potentially giving the impression to the client that "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing."
"We are one firm and should act like one firm," he said.
Some partners on the West Coast also had concerns about Josh's involvement in client matters. In either 2017 or 2018, Josh requested that he work with attorney Robyn Crowther on a litigation matter for Schwab, in part because he knew its founder, Charles Schwab, according to a former firm lawyer familiar with the matter.
Once Josh began working on the matter, Crowther became worried that her client would not be pleased by the work Josh ended up performing. She and others discussed how to navigate the situation, according to the former firm lawyer.
"You can't imagine how much energy went into trying to figure out how to navigate these internal land mines," said the lawyer.
The internal skirmishes that broke out between attorneys at Boies Schiller reflect a common tension point among attorneys at major law firms. To establish their value, attorneys must build contacts at corporations that feed the firm's revenue stream with cases and deal work. Sometimes, especially when it comes to trial lawyers, there can be infighting among them over who should reach out to a client and who is best suited to handle a particular matter.
But some lawyers felt this dynamic was more prevalent at Boies Schiller than elsewhere. This was in part because of the way the firm paid attorneys, with an objective scoring system that tracked the clients attorneys brought into the firm, as well as the matters they worked on and supervised.
The very nature of the system led some attorneys to manipulate numbers to their advantage. In some cases, they sought credit for landing clients when their role in doing so was minimal, according to current and former firm attorneys.
Jonathan Schiller was known for getting origination credit on numerous business and individual clients. But some partners privately griped that the system allowed Schiller, as a person who helped administer it, to get credit for work others felt they deserved, according to people who experienced it.
Some of the younger partners, for instance, became annoyed that he received origination credit — a designation that entitled him to 2.5 percent of firm revenue from a client's matters — for companies like tech giant Apple and oil refinery Citgo, whose legal work was handled by other firm attorneys who knew the companies' legal teams and worked with them on a regular basis.
Jonathan, they thought, had a minor role in the client relationship and didn't deserve to be taking as big of a cut of their legal fees.
Some said these frustrations were more a product of the compensation system rather than any problem with Schiller. But attorneys who worked with Schiller said he could have been more generous, pointing out that Boies sometimes ceded origination credit to younger partners when they brought in new matters from one of his old clients. While many partners didn't lodge formal complaints to Schiller, there were certainly verbal disagreements in which they felt a power imbalance, they said.
"Jonathan doesn't have to get into disputes with people," one of these people said. "He gets to decide."
Schiller told Insider that any qualms about credit were rarely brought to his attention, and he maintained that he originated Apple in 2012 and Citgo in 2017. He said that over the course of 19 years, he and Boies reviewed questions or disputes over credit fewer than five times.
"The only concern about credits involving me that I was aware of involved the Citgo representation (which was a relatively small matter)," he wrote in an emailed statement.
Boies also said he heard no complaints about Apple. In hindsight, he said that adding origination credit as a metric to compensate partners — which began 15 years ago — may have been a mistake. "I'm not sure it was the right thing to do," he said. But he noted that it was not Jonathan's idea.
Last year, the firm overhauled its compensation system, implementing a new one designed to facilitate collaboration between partners.
Matthew Schwartz, a newly installed co-managing partner, said the new system takes into account subjective factors like recruiting and management responsibilities. He told Insider that he valued Jonathan as a resource when it came to firm management, and that clients continue to value his competitiveness. He declined to publicly address former firm attorneys perceptions that Jonathan marred the firm's brand with favoritism.
"One of the things that very clearly defines this firm is that it is a meritocracy," Schwartz said. "And that is true from the youngest associates to the most senior partners."
Schwartz is a senior partner at Boies Schiller. He shares a seat on the firm's executive committee and was recruited to the firm in 2015, after serving as a top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. But even he isn't immune to perceptions of favoritism from colleagues — Schwartz's father is Schiller's cardiologist. Nobody who spoke with Insider questioned Schwartz's abilities as a lawyer and leader of the firm, but they said Jonathan supported his advancement, contributing to at least two former firm partners' beliefs that Schwartz benefited from his family connection.
Schwartz declined to speak publicly about the matter.
Today, many of the attorneys who once worked with Jonathan Schiller have joined other firms, and onetime clients have followed his former colleagues out the door.
There have been many reasons for the exits, including that attorneys were offered larger pay packages at other firms, according to people who received them. But Jonathan still believes the generational transition at Boies Schiller "has worked and is working," as the firm reshuffles the deck of firm leaders.
Jonathan also said that lawyers who recently left his team didn't tell him he was the reason for their departures. And he denied anonymous criticisms about how he related to people. "I have never been abrasive to former colleagues," he wrote. His tone changed somewhat as Insider showed him more allegations about his behavior. He later wrote that he was "sure that over a half century of practicing law, there are some people I have hurt or offended."
Josh says he sees himself staying at Boies Schiller long term, despite taking some time off last year during a widely-reported investigation into a charge of domestic violence against him. The charge was subsequently dropped, and the firm hired an independent investigator who cleared him of wrongdoing, but the event became a distraction to some firm attorneys.
"I started my career at Boies Schiller and look forward to many more years working on behalf of our clients," Josh told Insider, noting that he recently filed an intellectual-property case on behalf of two filmmakers over a screenplay they claim was stolen and copied.
"To the extent that I have said or done anything that has made other people feel uncomfortable, I apologize," he said. "It was not my intention to offend or otherwise alienate anyone."
People who know both men say the story of the Schillers' mark on the firm is more a tale about Jonathan, in that he ruled the firm with an iron fist and had his own team of lawyers he promoted, which could rankle other attorneys. Josh Schiller, they said, was just an extreme example of that.
In fact, Josh may have experienced Jonathan's temper more than anyone, people said. "He was his biggest booster and harshest critic," said one of their former colleagues.
And their differing personalities, as they were described by some, left no question as to who held the power. Jonathan, they said, was known to be serious, intimidating, and charismatic in meetings, directing conversations with authority. Josh was more casual, cracking jokes with coworkers and socializing in the firm's library-and-entertainment center, former colleagues said.
"Josh can actually be a nice guy," one person who has worked with both men said. "Jonathan is the kind of guy who will send you, at random, an all-caps email — the email equivalent of screaming — on something as trivial as he wasn't copied."
Boies, who has known Josh since he was a teenager, said he believes Josh has been hurt more than helped by Jonathan's role at the firm.
"If his last name was Smith, he would get more credit, he would have had more support, people would have liked him better," Boies said. "There's no doubt that there were people who didn't put Josh on their cases because of Jonathan."
Back inside La Grenouille, it was almost midnight and all other customers had filtered out.
Waitstaff stood by silently as Boies wanted to keep talking.
He and Schiller had spent 25 years together, building Boies Schiller into an institution that was a force to be reckoned with. They had been through highs and lows, winning cases some thought unwinnable and dealing with setback after setback, not least of which were the heaps of negative press that came pouring down over the past several years.
The two didn't always see eye to eye, according to people who know both men. But their strengths and weaknesses seemed to complement each other: Boies, the courtroom storyteller, and Schiller, the master rainmaker with admission to exclusive, members-only clubs.
Sitting in his corner seat, stirring his cocktail with a thin black straw, Boies said he personally identified with people who were being criticized, rather than people who were doing the criticizing, adding that he and Schiller had different styles.
But he held back in placing blame on Schiller in the wake of workplace allegations that criticized his leadership.
"What I really care about is that people be genuine," Boies said.
"And Jonathan is genuine."
Jack Newsham and Meghan Morris contributed to this story.
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