Joshua Matz of Kaplan Hecker & Fink. (Courtesy photo)

Joshua Matz, who recently worked as counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings, is returning to Kaplan Hecker & Fink as a partner and will help the boutique firm launch a new office in Washington, D.C.

While Kaplan Hecker has a presence in D.C., the new office marks an official expansion to the region as the three-year-old firm seeks to expand its litigation work in the area.

Matz said that when he joined the firm, he was essentially the practice's entire D.C. presence but that the new office will help establish them in the area.

Matz said he had other options after leaving the congressional committee, but returning to Kaplan Hecker was an easy decision. He said the firm's approach to making civil rights and public interest litigation a central part of its work, rather than solely having pro bono work on the side, was a major draw.

"This is a firm that has managed to merge a commitment to progressive legal reform with a first-rate white collar and complex litigation practice," he said.

Matz said that it "became increasingly clear to the firm that there are amazingly talented lawyers in D.C. who would be an ideal fit," and formally expanding to the nation's capital was the logical next step.

Matz's elevation to a partner from his previous role as of counsel also marks the firm's investment in an attorney already spotlighted as a star in legal circles. In a statement Friday, founding partner Roberta Kaplan described Matz as "one of the greatest legal minds of his generation."

Kaplan said during an interview Friday that she doesn't view the firm five years from now having a number of offices in several cities. "We're not going to be one of those firms with a presence in six, seven other cities. That's not really our goal," she said, emphasizing the firm's commitment to the kinds of lawyers it wants to bring in.

She said the "secret sauce" of the firm is that they can offer "extraordinarily talented people" to their clients who "have an incredible creativity about the law and the ways to use the law to help solve problems."

Matz went on leave the firm in October to join the House Judiciary Committee ahead of its role in the impeachment proceedings. An impeachment expert who co-authored a 2017 book on the topic with Harvard's Laurence Tribe, Matz helped lawmakers prepare for the high-profile hearings on the constitutional issues surrounding impeachment.

He was also one of the staff members who worked on the committee's report on the constitutional grounds for impeachment, intended to be an updated roadmap from a similar Watergate-era report on the history of impeachment and when the rarely utilized constitutional tool should be used.

Kaplan and Matz said they expect the firm's new offices, located in downtown Washington, D.C., will draw in additional attorneys in the near future. Matz said the firm's recent hire, Marshall Miller, will also be partly based out of D.C.

Michael Skocpol, a recently hired associate and former clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, will also be associated with the D.C. office.

Matz said he will establish a congressional investigations practice for the firm, which he expects Miller, a DOJ veteran, to play a crucial role in developing.

Part of that work, Matz said, will build off his recent experience working with the House Judiciary Committee.

"It turns out presidential impeachment is not generally considered a viable full-time litigation practice," Matz joked. But he said, after working on the Senate impeachment trial, he was ready to return to the "normal constitutional court rules of practice, procedure and evidence."

Matz said his future portfolio will also include some of the complex litigation that Kaplan Hecker has focused on in the financial and technology sectors, but that helping "to further develop that vision of a progressive legal practice … that's incredibly important to me."

Matz's elevation makes him one of eight partners at the firm, which already features two counsels, 20 associates and seven staff members, as well as a law clerk.

The firm, founded in 2017, has already made some big waves in its brief history. Kaplan and others at the firm, including Matz, are working alongside attorneys from Boies Schiller Flexner and Cooley to represent 11 people who were injured in the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Kaplan, who famously secured a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the Defense of Marriage Act's block against same-sex marriages in 2013, is also representing E. Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump in New York state court.

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