Harvey Weinstein and David Boies's lawyer-client relationship

Harvey Weinstein and David Boies’s lawyer-client relationship developed into a sustained alliance that reached beyond courtroom work: Boies helped Weinstein counter reporting and allegations, advised him in conflicts within his companies, and remained loyal to him as scrutiny intensified. Their connection joined professional representation to overlapping business and social interests, while repeatedly placing Boies between Weinstein, journalists, and the institutions seeking answers about his conduct.

Formation and Expansion of the Relationship

The relationship was already established by 2001, when Weinstein persuaded Boies to write a book about some of his legal cases. Boies initially resisted, saying he had neither the time nor the inclination for such a project. Weinstein made the assignment sound simple, and Boies eventually agreed. When a year passed without a word written, Boies’s wife discovered that the book was listed for publication that fall. Feeling boxed in by the public commitment, he wrote daily until he delivered a manuscript. The episode offered an early example of Weinstein’s ability to enlist the lawyer in projects beyond a conventional legal engagement—and of Boies’s difficulty saying no.

Within months of their first lunch in 2001, Boies was privately helping Weinstein respond to the possibility of an article about Rowena Chiu’s allegation of sexual assault. In 2002, journalist Ken Auletta was pursuing the payments Weinstein had made to Chiu and Zelda Perkins, whose settlement agreements sharply restricted what they could disclose. The women did not speak with Auletta, and the confidentiality provisions they had accepted limited their ability to discuss the matter. The absence of an on-the-record allegation would become decisive in the magazine’s assessment of whether it could publish.

At a meeting with Auletta, editor David Remnick, another editor, and the magazine’s lawyer, Boies initially appeared to moderate Weinstein’s threats to seek an injunction. He reminded Weinstein that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution could not simply be circumvented. But Boies then warned the journalists that publishing would be a grave mistake. He later told Megan Twohey that he had believed Weinstein’s account that his encounter with Chiu was consensual and had considered the possibility that women were seeking money. At a follow-up meeting, Bob Weinstein produced personal checks he said he had written to settle the matter for his brother, arguing that company money had not been used. Without a public allegation or evidence of company funds being misused, Auletta and his editors concluded that he could not write the story.

Counsel, Business, and Mutual Interests

Boies’s role broadened as he became counsel to the Weinstein brothers and became increasingly involved in their work. During their dispute with Disney over the distribution of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, he helped the brothers regain control of the film and take it to Lionsgate Films. When they left Disney and formed The Weinstein Company in 2005, Boies helped secure contracts that specified the brothers could be fired only if convicted of a felony. His work thus extended from advising an individual client to helping shape the terms under which the brothers would govern their new company.

Their association also included shared appearances at film openings, charity events, and political fund-raisers. Boies valued Weinstein as a connection to the film industry, and their interests touched his own family and business ventures. Boies’s daughter, Mary Regency, was an aspiring actress; Weinstein discussed a possible role for her, and an internal message stated that the role had not yet been offered because Weinstein wanted to know whether Boies wanted or needed to do something first. Boies also formed the Boies/Schiller Film Group in 2012, and the group did business with The Weinstein Company. These ties do not, by themselves, establish why Boies made particular legal decisions. They do show that his representation existed alongside personal and commercial connections that made the boundary between lawyer, business associate, and industry ally less simple.

Asked whether these film-industry entanglements explained his efforts to keep allegations from public view, Boies acknowledged that they could have played a part, while also describing concealment as part of his work for a client. He said he was highly dedicated to his clients. In the years that followed, he continued to learn of other accusers and repeatedly helped Weinstein conceal, shape, or suppress allegations. Boies said he had understood Weinstein’s behavior as philandering and had believed that women in Hollywood might be pursuing affairs with him. Even after the scale of the allegations became public, Boies said he had no regret about the way he had represented Weinstein.

Corporate Oversight and Conflicting Duties

The relationship also affected attempts to scrutinize Weinstein from inside The Weinstein Company. In 2013, Lance Maerov joined one of the board’s three independent seats, with a mandate to protect shareholders. When allegations raised the possibility of a pattern that could expose the company to liability, Maerov sought to examine Weinstein’s personnel file during contract renewal. Weinstein refused to let him see it. Boies offered instead to review the file himself and report to the board about potential legal problems for the company.

Maerov distrusted this arrangement. Boies sometimes seemed to be acting for the company and sometimes for Weinstein, leaving the board uncertain whether damaging information would reach it. On July 1, 2015, accountant Irwin Reiter and two other executives met Maerov for breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. Reiter showed him a memo outlining what Weinstein had done to Emily Nestor, giving Maerov a glimpse of material he had been seeking. The document did not lead him to press for a fuller review. When Boies acknowledged that Weinstein had paid settlements over the years, Maerov did not pursue the details, and he later minimized the memo’s significance.

The contract negotiations produced financial protections rather than an effective guarantee that misconduct would stop. Weinstein agreed that the company would adopt a code of conduct and that he would pay the cost of settlements resulting from his misconduct, with additional penalties of $250,000 for the first settlement, $500,000 for the second, and increasing amounts up to $1 million. The contract also allowed termination for misconduct. Maerov’s central concern was that the company be protected from liability; once he believed financial and legal safeguards were in place, he considered his work substantially done. Boies had helped secure a framework that allocated potential costs, while the board’s access to information and its capacity to protect employees remained limited.

The Pressures of Confidentiality and Representation

The cases surrounding Boies’s work unfolded in a legal environment where private settlement was often treated as the practical route for harassment claims. Lawyers told reporters that confidentiality clauses were common. Women might need the money, seek privacy, or want to leave the experience behind without being branded as liars or habitual litigators. Federal protections excluded some categories of workers; the filing period could be as short as 180 days, and damages were capped at $300,000. For lawyers paid on contingency, a settlement also offered a more reliable fee than a lawsuit that might yield nothing. The result was a system in which agreements could resolve claims while making the underlying conduct difficult for others to investigate.

Perkins and Chiu’s experience illustrated the force of those restrictions. After resigning and consulting lawyers, they were told that, lacking physical evidence and having not called police in Venice, a settlement was their most practical option. They wanted any money to go to charity and tried to attach conditions intended to prevent further misconduct, including therapy, a harassment policy, and procedures for future complaints. The final agreements instead paid each woman £125,000 and imposed extensive limits on disclosure. Perkins could not keep a complete copy of the agreement, and the restrictions reached even the professionals with whom she could discuss the events. Boies’s later involvement in fighting a possible article about Chiu therefore took place against a background in which the settlement itself had already made public testimony harder to obtain.

The 2017 Investigation and the Alliance’s Limits

In July 2017, as The New York Times prepared an investigation, Weinstein called Boies while the lawyer was about to board a private helicopter in East Hampton after a family birthday celebration. Weinstein proposed using his friendship with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to pressure him to kill the story. Boies dismissed the idea as a waste of time. The call nonetheless showed how Weinstein continued to turn to a lawyer with whom he had worked for sixteen years as he searched for ways to stop publication.

As the story approached, the alliance faced a more direct test inside the company. On a Tuesday night in October, Maerov demanded an emergency conference call because Weinstein had hired lawyers, including Boies, to deal with the approaching story without informing the board. Boies now told the board more plainly that the article would be damaging and outlined the reported range of eight to twelve settlements, while warning that the number could be higher. He argued against both defending Weinstein outright and terminating him, urging a middle course and a unified response. The shift from minimizing the problem to briefing the board reflected how little room remained to keep the investigation at bay; it did not amount to a break in the professional alliance. Across the relationship, Boies’s representation helped Weinstein resist outside scrutiny, while the lawyer continued to describe that loyalty as his job and, in retrospect, as something he did not regret.