Ex-Kasowitz Partner Seeks Millions From Firm He Calls Mismanaged

An ex-partner at the firm founded by famed litigator Marc Kasowitz has filed suit against his former employer, claiming mismanagement that led to plunging profits and growing debt.

Eric Herschmann, who left the New York firm to start a new venture earlier this year, is suing the Kasowitz operation for unpaid wages that allegedly amounted to millions of dollars, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in New York State Supreme Court.

“As a result of Kasowitz’s mismanagement of the firm, the firm’s profits had plummeted,” Herschmann alleges in the suit. That led Kasowitz “to secretly saddle the firm with huge amounts of debt to pay partner distributions,” the suit claims.

The Kasowitz firm in a statement called the lawsuit “a false document filled with inaccuracies and misstatements of fact.”

Herschmann’s allegations follow a string of departures from the firm that Kasowitz started in 1993 after leaving Mayer Brown. A three-laywer team including two partners, Michael Hanin and Jill Forster, exited Kasowitz for litigation boutique Pallas Partners in March. Litigator Jonathan Algor left the firm for Lowenstein Sandler’s New York office in June.

Herschmann was one of three ex-partners from Kasowitz who formed their own law operation called Herschmann Benson Bowen. Besides Herschmann, the other two name partners at the new firm are Michael Bowen and Daniel Benson, who co-founded the firm formerly known as Kasowitz Benson Torres, and Michael Bowen.

In his suit, Herschmann alleges Kasowitz breached fiduciary duties by lying about the firm’s financial status, and he requests “an accounting of the firm’s secretive finances.”

He left Kasowitz’s firm in 2020 to serve as White House lawyer under Donald Trump and was part of the president’s team during the first impeachment proceeding. Herschmann re-joined Kasowitz following his White House stint before leaving again to start Herschmann Benson Bowen.

He claims Kasowitz persuaded him to rejoin by saying the firm was “financially healthy and successful” and by promising he would return to his former rainmaker role “generating approximately $10 million per year in business,” according to the suit.

The Kasowitz firm in its statement said, “For 30 years, Mr. Herschmann was paid extraordinarily well for relatively few billable hours and small amounts of business. In a case of ‘no good deed goes unpunished,’ when his outrageous compensation demands near the end of his career were not met, he decided to file a thoroughly false public pleading violating, among other things, the partnership agreement’s confidential arbitration requirement.”

Herschmann did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is Herschmann v. Marc Kasowitz and Kasowitz LLP, N.Y. Sup. Ct., 12/15/25