As a young lawyer, Floyd Abrams didn't seek to specialize in media law, much less become the nation's preeminent First Amendment lawyer. The practice area didn't even exist when he joined Cahill Gordon & Reindel as an associate in 1963. But Abrams learned on the job, as media giants like NBC and The New York Times Company turned to his firm to defend their coverage of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. In 1971, shortly after making partner at Cahill, Abrams received a call from former Yale Law professor Alexander Bickel, asking him to help The New York Times fight an injunction against publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The resulting litigation lasted only 15 days—"but it changed my life," Abrams says.
The case also changed First Amendment law. Before the 1960s, federal courts rarely heard media law cases. But following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the Times in the Pentagon Papers case, there was an explosion of First Amendment litigation—and Abrams was at the forefront. Although he has spent his career litigating cases in several practice areas, including insurance, copyright, trademark, and antitrust law, Abrams is best known for his free-speech court cases. Past clients include ABC, CBS, CNN, Time, The Nation, Reader's Digest, and NPR. In 2003 he represented Senator Mitch McConnell in a challenge to federal election financing; in 2004 and 2005, Abrams defended Times reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in their efforts to protect their confidential sources after the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame was leaked.
