Lawrence Robbins, an influential trial and appellate lawyer who argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court, prepared high-profile witnesses for their congressional testimonies, and made his debut as a novelist only weeks before his passing, died on Nov. 2 in Manhattan. He was 72.

His clients included, among others, Marie Yovanovitch, dismissed as the ambassador to Ukraine on Mr. Trump’s orders; and Christine Blasey Ford who testified that Brett Kavanaugh, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Mr. Trump, had sexually assaulted her.

When the Covid-19 pandemic slowed down his law practice in 2020, Mr. Robbins turned to writing a novel, a long-held ambition. He drew on his legal background for The President’s Lawyer, a thriller about a powerful Washington lawyer who defended a former president accused of killing a woman with whom he was having an affair.