Background and career
David Boies ( BOYZ; born March 11, 1941) is an American lawyer who is the chairman of the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. He became known for leading the U.S. federal government's successful prosecution of Microsoft in United States v. Microsoft Corp., his unsuccessful representation of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, and for successful representation of the plaintiff in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which invalidated California Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. Boies has also represented various clients in U.S. lawsuits, including Theranos; tobacco companies; Harvey Weinstein; and Jeffrey Epstein's victims, including Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Boies was born in Sycamore, Illinois, to two teachers, and raised in a rural, farming community. He has four siblings. His first job was when he was 10 years old—a paper route with 120 customers. Boies has dyslexia and he did not learn to read until the third grade. Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell has described the unique processes of reading and learning Boies experienced due to his dyslexia. Boies' mother, for instance, would read stories to him when he was a child, and Boies would memorize them because he could not follow the words on the page. In 1954, the family moved to California. Boies graduated from Fullerton Union High School in Fullerton, California. Boies attended the University of Redlands, in Redlands, California, from 1960 to 1962, received a B.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1964, a J.D. degree magna cum laude from Yale Law School in 1966, and an LL.M. degree from New York University School of Law 1967; he was also awarded an honorary LL.D. from the University of Redlands in 2000. He is on the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, which is a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.
Boies began his career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, joining the firm after graduation from law school in 1966 and becoming a partner in 1973. He left Cravath in 1997 after a major client objected to his representation of the New York Yankees despite the firm having determined there was no conflict of interest. Boies departed the firm within 48 hours of being informed of the client's objection and went on to establish his own firm with his friend Jonathan Schiller, now known as Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP. It is currently rated 23rd in "overall prestige" and 15th among New York law firms by Vault.com, a website on legal career information.
From 1984 to 1985, Boies defended CBS in the libel suit Westmoreland v. CBS, but after dragging on for two years, the case was dropped. Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he represented Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore. In Jay Roach's Recount, which focuses on the case, Boies is played by Ed Begley Jr. In his 2001 book, prosecutor and author Vincent Bugliosi criticized Boies' abilities as a trial lawyer, arguing that Boies "wasn't forceful or eloquent at all in making his points" in Bush v. Gore. "[A]lthough he seemed to have a very good grasp of the facts, he seemed completely incapable of drawing powerful, irresistible inferences from those facts that painted his opposition into a corner". In 2000, Boies lost the first important file-sharing case which ultimately put Napster into bankruptcy.
In 2001 Boies represented the Justice Department in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Boies won a victory at trial, and the verdict was upheld on appeal. The appellate court overturned the relief ordered (breakup of the company) back to the trial court for further proceedings. Thereafter, the George W. Bush administration settled the case. Bill Gates said Boies was "out to destroy Microsoft". In 2001, the Washington Monthly called Boies "a brilliant trial lawyer", "a latter-day Clarence Darrow", and "a mad genius" for his work on the Microsoft case. In 2006, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP negotiated a major settlement with The American International Group on behalf of its client, C. V. Starr, a firm controlled by Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chairman and chief executive of A.I.G. In 2008 Boies negotiated on behalf of American Express two of the highest civil antitrust settlements ever for an individual company: $2.25 billion from Visa, and $1.8 billion from MasterCard. In 2009, following the California Supreme Court ruling on Strauss v. Horton, Boies joined former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the opposing attorney in Bush v. Gore, in the lawsuit Perry v. Brown seeking to overturn the state of California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. In August 2010, the District Court judge ruled in their clients' favor, finding Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional. On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have standing to challenge the ruling, allowing the District Court judgment to stand. Same-sex marriages resumed in California on June 28, 2013. Also in 2009, the Golden Gate Yacht Club retained Boies for their ongoing dispute with Société Nautique de Genève regarding the 33rd America's Cup. In March 2010, Boies joined the team of attorneys representing Jamie McCourt in her divorce from Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.
In 2011 Boies represented filmmaker Michael Moore regarding a Treasury Department investigation into Moore's trip to Cuba while filming for Sicko. Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP assisted the government in obtaining a $155 million settlement from Medco Health Solutions related to a qui tam complaint which alleged that Medco helped some pharmaceutical companies make more money by driving prescriptions to them; along with making the payment Medco also signed a corporate integrity agreement. Boies was part of the legal team representing the National Football League in their antitrust litigation, Brady v. NFL. Boies represented the National Basketball Players Association during the 2011 NBA lockout. He joined sides with Jeffrey Kessler, who opposed Boies as a representative for the players in the 2011 NFL lockout. Boies was the lead counsel for Oracle Corporation in its lawsuit against Google on the use of Java programming language technology in the Android operating system. The case decided that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents. In 2014, on behalf of Mr. Greenberg, Boies brought a claim that the government's $85 billion bailout of AIG had been unfair to the company's owners. Boies charged Greenberg more than $50 million in legal fees. Although the court accepted some of Boies's arguments, the court refused to award the plaintiffs a single dollar. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected all of Boies's claims and threw out the trial court's decision. In 2011, Boies began working as legal representation for the now defunct blood testing company, Theranos. Prior to joining their board, he worked for founder Elizabeth Holmes and her company as special adviser and attended all of the company's board meetings. In February 2016, Boies agreed to both sit on the board of directors and act as the attorney for the troubled Silicon Valley startup. The controversial dual role was deemed difficult as he would have to represent both the company (as lawyer) and investors (as a director). In the 2022 Hulu miniseries The Dropout, Boies was portrayed by Kurtwood Smith. In 2012, Boies represented three tobacco companies, Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group LLC, in their appeal of a $2.5 million Tampa jury verdict in the death of smoker Charlotte Douglas. Later in 2012 Boies defended Gary Jackson, former president of Academi (previously known as BlackWater), in a federal prosecution which alleged he and his co-defendants illegally hid firearm purchases from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 2015, Boies represented Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein in renegotiating the Weinsteins' employment contract. According to The Wall Street Journal, Boies negotiated Harvey Weinstein's contract without informing Weinstein Co. directors that he had an investment in the company's movies. In 2017, Boies agreed to join the legal team for Lawrence Lessig's legal fight against winner-take-all Electoral College vote allocations in the states. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones hired Boies in 2017 to advise on Jones's legal strategy against NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL compensation committee in the wake of the suspension of the running back Ezekiel Elliott. Since 2019, Boies has represented several of Jeffrey Epstein's victims including Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
