Josh Rosenkranz Is American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Year for an Unprecedented 3rd Time

2 minute read | November.18.2025

Read the American Lawyer feature story

Josh Rosenkranz, Orrick’s Supreme Court & Appellate practice group leader, has again been named Litigator of the Year by American Lawyer – making him the only practitioner ever to be named Litigator of the Year three times.

In a feature story, American Lawyer describes Josh as “The Man Who Makes 10-Digit Verdicts Go Away.” In the span of only six months, he and his Orrick teams convinced appellate courts to overturn two mega verdicts: the largest trade secrets verdict in history, a $2 billion judgment against Pegasystems; and the largest copyright verdict ever, a $1 billion judgment against Cox Communications.

The AmLaw article describes the meticulous preparation process, collaborative approach with trial teams and narrative-driven strategy that has enabled our team to overcome the toughest odds for our clients.

AmLaw has twice dubbed Josh “The Defibrillator” for his ability to revive the toughest cases on appeal. He was first awarded Litigator of the Year in 2012 for rescuing MGA Entertainment’s famed Bratz dolls brand and for vacating a crippling injunction on behalf of EchoStar. He received the honor again in 2018 for his groundbreaking Second Circuit win for Microsoft in one of the most important privacy cases in recent history and for voiding a $1.27B penalty against Bank of America and one of its former executives, in a prosecution regarded as the Justice Department’s signature case arising from the financial crisis. In 2022, he was a finalist for a third time.

In addition, Orrick was one of five finalists for 2025 IP Litigation Department of the Year for the fourth time. Over the past two years, our team has continued to amass a winning record in patent, copyright, trademark and trade secrets cases before the ITC, battleground districts, the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.

We continue our commitment to excellence in litigation, which comprises nearly half of our practice, and we are truly grateful to our clients for entrusting us with their most important cases.

Related Lawyers

E. Joshua Rosenkranz Partner, Supreme Court & Appellate, Intellectual Property

New York

See my bio

D:+1 212 506 5380
E: [email protected]

Practice:

Finance Sector
Supreme Court & Appellate
Intellectual Property
Complex Litigation & Dispute Resolution
White Collar, Investigations, Securities Litigation & Compliance
Antitrust & Competition
Life Sciences & HealthTech

vCard

See full bio

E. Joshua Rosenkranz Partner

New York

Josh was named American Lawyer’s “Litigator of the Year” in 2025. He is the only lawyer to have received this honor three times—only one other lawyer has been named twice—and he was also recognized as a finalist in 2022. In 2012, the magazine dubbed him “the Defibrillator” based on his streak of appellate wins for companies that “appeared to be at death’s door,” and in 2017 it declared, he “still deserves the moniker we once gave him.”

In 2014, The Financial Times named Josh one of the 10 most innovative lawyers in the North American legal sector for his work “demystify[ing] the technical issues” and securing a victory in the blockbuster Federal Circuit appeal, Oracle v. Google. Chambers USA has reported, “He wins accolades for his ‘brilliant analysis and judgment.’ Clients appreciate how he ‘rethinks every case from the ground up,’ and add: ‘He can take the most complicated legal or technological issue and present it in a way that seems like common sense.’” Another edition of Chambers USA added: “‘His briefs are quite simply beautiful,’” and “clients describe his courtroom presence as ‘both commanding and accessible at the same time.’ He has the ‘perfect combination of persuasiveness, intelligence, wit, and deference.’”

Josh's practice covers a wide range of subjects, including intellectual property, financial services, securities, privacy, antitrust, federal preemption, insurance law, corporate governance, criminal law, and constitutional litigation. Among his recent clients are Cisco, Credit Suisse, Cox Communications, DISH Network, Genentech, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Mozilla, Oracle, Sonos, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Clients turn to Josh to win the highest stakes appeals, including appeals in cases that threaten the very survival of a business. For example:

He represented Microsoft in an international cause célèbre in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the U.S. Government’s claim that it can serve warrants for emails stored overseas.
He represented DISH Network in one of the most high-profile patent appeals in the country, successfully overturning an injunction that threatened the company's life.
He has been lead counsel in multiple cases either defending or challenging verdicts over $1 billion.
He represented Facebook in the high-profile battle waged by the founder's Harvard classmates, the Winklevoss twins, who laid claim to the idea for Facebook, winning a ruling from the Ninth Circuit to end the lawsuit.
He won a landmark victory in a Supreme Court case that rescued the estimated $60 billion U.S. market of copyrighted goods manufactured abroad.
He represented 36 law schools in a high-profile Supreme Court case against the Department of Defense.

Josh was the founding president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, one of the country’s foremost public interest firms. Over the course of eight years, he was the Brennan Center’s chief strategist on litigation and public policy advocacy. Before that, Josh founded the Office of the Appellate Defender, a public defender office specializing in criminal appeals.