Matt Lauer appears NBC Today Show on Nov. 17, 2017, in New York City. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Elizabeth "Libby" Locke's law firm profile boasts that she's "killed flawed articles, storylines, and broadcast segments" about her clients. But Locke and her client Matt Lauer were making headlines Wednesday with a letter to Variety disputing new sexual assault allegations against the former "Today" host.

Locke, a former Kirkland & Ellis partner who's now a name partner of Washington, D.C.'s Clare Locke, is representing Lauer. Brooke Nevils, a former NBC News colleague, alleges Lauer raped her at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, according to an upcoming book from journalist Ronan Farrow. The book, entitled "Catch and Kill," was obtained by Variety, which says it recounts how NBC News employee Brooke Nevils reported the alleged rape to NBC News in 2017, prompting Lauer's termination.

According to press reports, Locke distributed  Lauer's letter, which disputes the allegations made by Nevils. In the letter, Lauer wrote that he had a "completely mutual and consensual" affair with Nevils. He described the rape allegation as "dangerous and defamatory."

In its own statement, NBC News said Lauer's "conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time. That's why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague."

Elizabeth (Libby) M. Locke, with Clare Locke. (Courtesy photo)

Locke founded Clare Locke, a defamation and commercial litigation boutique, with her husband, fellow Kirkland alum Tom Clare, in 2014.

In an interview with the National Law Journal last year, Clare and Locke described their practice as a check against sloppy and biased reporting in the current cash-strapped but ultra-competitive media era. "The rush to be first leads to more mistakes (whether intentional or not), more salacious headlines and content to attract readership, and thus, more false and damaging articles being published," they said.

The firm has built a practice partly around representing men who have been accused of sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era. Locke argued in The Wall Street Journal last year that the sexual assault allegations leveled against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh "thoroughly refuted the idea that those accused of sexual assault have an unfair advantage over their accusers." The Kavanaugh controversy, she wrote, "demonstrates not only the power of #MeToo, but also its potential as a weapon—and how an audience eager for victim narratives and sinister power dynamics can be galvanized without proof to shatter a man's reputation."

The firm's other high-profile matters have included reaching a settlement for British activist Maajid Nawaz from the Southern Poverty Law Center for $3.375 million. As part of that settlement, the president of the SPLC recorded a video apologizing to Nawaz for including him and his foundation, the Quilliam Foundation, in its guide called, "A Journalist's Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists."

Locke and her firm also secured a $3 million jury verdict against Rolling State magazine on behalf of University of Virginia associate dean Nicole Eramo. Eramo she was featured in the 2014 Rolling Stone article "A Rape on Campus," a story about a purported gang rape at the university that the magazine retracted five months after it was published.

The firm told ALM last month that it had won a "$22.35 million defamation verdict after convincing a federal jury that a publicly traded company had lied to investors about our client for starting a proxy fight—more than 10 times the size of any defamation award in recent Fourth Circuit or North Carolina history."

According to her profile on her firm's website, Locke is currently "litigating matters against CNN, Bloomberg, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper." She did not return a request for comment as of press time.

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