Robert Gips

Practice Areas

Rob has served as legal counsel and as business and financial advisor to Native American governments and their enterprises since 1983. His professional practice has included service as outside general counsel and advisor in business and financial transactions for federally recognized Indian tribes and businesses throughout the country.

Current clients of Rob’s include Tribes such as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and Four Winds Casino Resort, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation (MPTN) and Foxwoods Resort Casino, the Quapaw Nation of Oklahoma and Downstream Casino Resort, and the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians and Downstream Casino Resorts. Rob’s specialized business development work for our clients has encompassed the creation and acquisition of hotel, resort, casino, and gaming facilities, newspaper acquisition, internet fiber development, tribal housing, tribal manufacturing facilities, industrial plants, and a broad variety of both on- and off-reservation joint ventures. He has also represented lenders and borrowers in billions of dollars of complex commercial financings in Indian country. Rob represents tribal governments in all facets of governmental affairs.

Rob has assisted tribal governments across the country with review and drafting of tribal constitutions, laws, regulations, and codes and charters. He has represented a number of tribes in gaming compact negotiations, most recently the Pokagon Band in the negotiation of the first gaming compact in Indiana, and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in the amendment of its Connecticut compact to allow tribal mobile online and sports betting.

Rob is one of 3 independent member of the Board of Managers of Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment and Seminole Hard Rock International, which operates over 180 cafes, hotels, and casinos in over 70 countries around the world. In that capacity, he also serves as an independent member of the company’s Audit Committee and its Corporate Governance, Compliance and Compensation Committee, and as an independent member of the Hard Rock Atlantic City’s Audit and Compliance Committee, which together provide him with broad experience with state-law regulatory and compliance matters. He also serves as the only independent member of the Board of the Passamaquoddy Tribe Wild Blueberry Company, the country’s largest native blueberry producer.

Rob is ranked by his peers in Chambers USA and in Best Lawyers in America for the category of Native American Law. Chambers USA has awarded its highest national ranking to Rob for his Native American law practice.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and a J.D. and MBA from Yale Law School and Yale School of Management. After law school, he clerked for Robert Wilentz, the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.