Pictures by means of Jason Nuttle
Sigrid McCawley’s title has change into synonymous with probably the most maximum high-profile criminal battles of our hour. Her face is a continuing presence on main information shops—from Netflix documentaries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Affluent prosperous) to interviews with 60 Mins, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. As one of the crucial key figures preventing for justice to the behalf of Epstein’s sufferers, she has navigated the complexities of probably the most maximum difficult and population criminal instances in contemporary historical past.
A Managing Spouse at Boies Schiller Flexner, a company based by means of famed attorney David Boies and considered elite amongst litigation companies, McCawley’s ability as a litigator has earned her prestigious accolades, together with Forbes 2025 The us’s Easiest-In-Situation Attorneys and a place on their Govern 200 listing in 2024. The American Legal professional named her Litigator of the Era in 2020, and Nationwide Legislation Magazine known her as a Litigation Trailblazer in 2019. Forbes as soon as described her court docket paintings as “ironclad interrogation skills” and “a legal performance that should be taught.”
However past the headlines and high-stakes trials is a fuller portrait of McCawley—the mum, coach, and family chief whose paintings has now not best recovered masses of thousands and thousands for survivors however continues to order the criminal soil in lasting tactics. That is the aspect that blends court docket victories with boardroom management, public milestones, and the calmness moments that hold her grounded.
After I set in at her Mediterranean-style Fortress Lauderdale house, she greets me with a heat smile. At 5’10”, she has the posture of anyone who’s spent a long time commanding courtrooms, but her means is at ease. The McCawleys have known as this area their sanctuary for 16 years—related plenty to the courthouse, airport, and their respective workplaces on Las Olas to steadiness the calls for of a bulky caseload with a bustling public month.
That month comprises 4 children: Kincaid, 20; dual sons Max and Zac, 16; and Maddy, 11. Between faculty, sports activities, and advance, “free time” is extra of an idea than a truth. Dan McCawley, a business actual property legal professional, coaches their children’ groups—basketball, soccer, baseball, even Maddy’s football. “It was love at first sight,” Dan says of assembly Sigrid at a chum’s Global Line guard celebration in 1997. “I told my mom the next day I’d met the girl I wanted to marry.” Next two years in Washington, D.C., they returned to Fortress Lauderdale—Dan’s place of origin—as a result of “it’s where I knew we’d be better off raising a family.”
Sigrid’s paintings ethic was once cast lengthy earlier than she ever stepped right into a court docket. Born in upstate Brandnew York, she moved along with her mom, Jean Pasker, and two used sisters to Naples when she was once coming into the 6th grade. Jean raised the ladies on her personal, ceaselessly running 3 jobs to hold them afloat. “That’s where I get it from,” McCawley says of her mom’s relentless force. “She just didn’t stop—ever.” It’s a lesson she’s carried into her occupation: the willingness to hold appearing up, regardless of how crispy the struggle.
That very same force has fueled her get up in a occupation the place the bar for ladies is ceaselessly i’m ready upper. “Most of the time, women have to try twice as hard as their male counterparts—and that’s still true today,” she says. However she additionally sees indicators of journey for the nearest past. “The men I work with now are much more understanding of women. You see more real partnerships in relationships than you did 20 years ago.”
Even so, the soil of Weighty Legislation remainder difficult. “A lot of women don’t end up staying in it,” says McCawley. “They might go in-house or take a different path. There are only a few of us in management at big firms, and I think it’s because of the barriers you face.” Breaking via intended proving her worth past query. “Bringing in business is what gets you elevated in a firm,” she says. “I had to find a way to navigate that and stay with it.”
She’s fast to problem the attorney stereotype. “A client will say, ‘I want a pit bull.’ And I’ll tell them, ‘You actually don’t. You want someone who’s strategic, who will pick the right moments to be tough, because if you’re a pit bull all the time, you lose your impact.’ You can be calm, you can be measured—and still be formidable. The way you change that perception is by winning.”
That strategic mindset might be on complete show this September, when McCawley and her spouse, Kenya Davis advance to trial within the Southern District of Brandnew York—Drew Dixon’s case towards tune government LA Reid—the place they’ll name high-profile observers, together with John Legend, to the get up. Within the days previous her three-week trial in federal court docket—when maximum attorneys can be house making ready for trial—she’ll be in Washington, D.C., status shoulder to shoulder with survivors at a Global With out Exploitation rally, a population reaction to information that Ghislaine Maxwell may just obtain a discounted sentence or perhaps a mercy.
“She walks what she talks,” says Daybreak Schneider, founding father of Schneider Staff Media and McCawley’s longtime guide. “And I think that is one of the reasons for her success and why people are drawn to her and admire her.”
Sigrid’s time to time paintings comes to a batch of subtle litigation together with shuffling from running to help her power shoppers with business disputes to dealing with multi-million buck company purchase out disputes. Her caseload is stuffed with issues that experience drawn nationwide consideration. She is representing a bunch {of professional} dancers in a sexual abuse case involving a former dance trainer and his spouse—paintings she describes as ‘being an important example of her firm’s loyalty to detached criminal paintings for the ones in want’. “We just had a hearing last week on summary judgment,” she says, “and I expect that that case will get set for trial soon.”
Within the contemporary Vigorous v. Baldoni subject, she defended Blake Vigorous’s longtime publicist, Leslie Sloane and her corporate Visible PR, in a defamation swimsuit introduced by means of actor Justin Baldoni and effectively were given her shopper disregarded from the litigation. The population struggle over that case “has taken away from what is really at the core—a woman who contends that she was harmed in the workplace and is rightfully standing up for herself.” It’s survivor-centered paintings that defines a lot of her occupation. Her long-running illustration of Virginia Giuffre and alternative ladies abused by means of Epstein remainder one in every of her maximum high-profile—and private—missions. “In the Epstein space, I have a very large class action right now, still pending in the Southern District of New York, where we have sued, on behalf of the survivors, Epstein’s right-hand lawyer and accountant—two of the centerpieces of his operation,” she explains. “Because it takes a lawyer to be able to create those false companies and document that information, and it takes an accountant to handle the money.”
In 2023, her crew connect $365 million in settlements from JP Morgan and Deutsche Attic, the use of a magazine criminal concept, McCawley describes the settlements as “really life-changing money for those women.” However she’s now not executed. She continues to push for the unsealing of 1000’s of pages of court docket information referred to as the “Epstein files.” “People deserve to know who was there, why they were there, when they were involved,” she says. “There’s no reason just because you have money that you should be protected when you’ve done bad things.”
She recollects the hour then Epstein died, when Pass judgement on Richard Berman allowed the survivors to talk brazenly in court docket. “Virginia was there, and many of the other survivors. You got to see that collective support from one another. They all came from different walks of life, abused at different times, and to see that sisterhood of survivorship—it was beautiful. It made me feel like, okay, there’s hope for these women. We got them some financial justice, which helps. It’s not perfect, but it can help alleviate the burden and get them good mental health care.”
Virginia’s premature passing this age underscores the emotional toll those instances tackle survivors. “From a trauma perspective, when you are ready to come to terms with that, it can affect you in many ways that you might not even realize…the scars of that abuse don’t go away. Facing those demons can be really difficult, and it doesn’t happen right away—it can resurface at different trigger points for different people,” McCawley says.
She additionally is aware of the machine isn’t constructed to deal with each survivor’s timeline. That’s why she’s preventing to abolish or lengthen the statute of boundaries for grownup survivors beneath the Federal Trafficking Employment. “That argument to protect defendants just isn’t there anymore,” she says. “In the digital age, evidence doesn’t just disappear. We can go back years and prove cases. The law just hasn’t caught up.”
And she or he’s revealed firsthand what it takes to turn out even essentially the most closely denied claims. “When Virginia first came out and said, ‘These things happened to me…,’ everyone said, ‘You’re lying.’ We got really lucky because there were hard copy documents that helped us. As a child, she was being put on these private planes, and they had to record her name. We were able to place her there, get a photo of her in that location. That’s how we proved it.”
Her caseload is bulky, however so is the call for for her support. She will get yells each time from population hoping she’ll whip their case. McCawley takes on as many as she will, however the truth is {that a} massive portion should be grew to become ailing. “If I can’t take it, I’ll find them someone who will”, she says.
Her advocacy extends way past the court docket. McCawley sits at the forums of the Broward People Substructure and Jack and Jill Heart, and he or she prior to now served for years at the board of ChildNet. She mentors younger attorneys on discovering purpose-driven paintings and devotes really extensive professional bono hours to instances that would possibly differently by no means be delivered to brightness. “It’s encouraging to see more large commercial firms stepping in and doing pro bono work,” she says. “It’s critical for access to justice.”
Dan says it’s her skill to mix criminal technique with human empathy that makes her so efficient. “Only Sigrid has clients who tell her they love her,” he says. “Not a lot of lawyers hear ‘I love you’ from their clients. She cares to a fault.”
It’s a sentiment she carries into each case. For McCawley, justice isn’t best concerning the verdict—it’s concerning the population. “I’ve seen the worst of humanity, but I’ve also seen the absolute best,” she says. “The survivors I’ve had the privilege of working with have changed me. They’ve given me hope—to survive those atrocities and still move forward, still fight, still live. That’s what keeps me going. It’s only made me a better person.”
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