6 of Alan Dershowitz’s biggest career highlights: OJ Simpson’s lawyer worked for Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein – and was Harvard Law School’s youngest full professor at 28

Apr 16 , 2024

Alan Dershowitz became the youngest full professor in Harvard Law School’s history in 1967, at the age of 28 – and went on to work for OJ Simpson, Donald Trump, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. Photo: Getty Images

‘Devil’s advocate’ Alan Dershowitz was part of the infamous OJ ‘dream team’, worked on Trump’s acquittal in his first impeachment trial, and defended Mike Tyson after he was convicted of rape

The only case Dershowitz says he regrets taking, out of the more than 250 in his half-century career, is Epstein’s – but he was also retained as a consultant by Weinstein’s defence team

He’s been called “the devil’s advocate” – and in fact wrote courtroom thriller The Advocate’s Devil about that most controversial of legal questions: what should you do as a defence lawyer if you suspect that your client is guilty and dangerous?

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor emeritus, may be 85, but his love for media attention, controversial cases and the law apparently remains strong. Dershowitz gained notoriety for the polarising cases he took on during his career, as well as admiration for his brilliant legal mind.

Here’s a look at six of his stand-out career moments.

1. OJ Simpson

In 1995, OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The televised court case was one of the most watched in US TV history, with more than 150 million people tuning in to see the not-guilty verdict, per The Hollywood Reporter.

It was thanks to Simpson’s army of lawyers, commonly referred to as “the dream team”, that the NFL star walked free despite overwhelming evidence against him. Dershowitz was part of said dream team, and after OJ’s death on April 10 this year, the lawyer described his infamous former client as someone “the police tried to frame”, per the New York Post. Dershowitz added that he “got to know [OJ] fairly well during the trial” and commented, “I’m upset that he died.”

2. Jeffrey Epstein

Per The New Yorker, Dershowitz met Jeffrey Epstein in 1996 through Lynn Forester, who would become Lady de Rothschild. The two men became firm friends, with Epstein helping Dershowitz invest in a hedge fund, and Epstein funding a programme at Harvard, where Dershowitz taught, with the lawyer appointed faculty affiliate of the programme as part of the initiative, according to the same publication.

In 2005, Epstein asked Dershowitz to help him after he found out he was being investigated for the sexual abuse of underage girls. Dershowitz negotiated a “non-prosecution agreement”, resulting in Epstein serving 13 months in prison, but with six out of seven days spent in an office-based “work release” programme – meaning that, almost all of the time, he was not actually in prison. So lenient were the conditions of Epstein’s “incarceration” that he was even allowed to receive visits from a number of young women at his place of work, per The New Yorker.

Jeffrey Epstein pictured in March 2017. Photo: New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP

Dershowitz’s relationship with Epstein got more complicated after two of Epstein’s victims said they had sex with Dershowitz, who denied the allegations. Per The New Yorker, the lawyer said that Epstein was the only person he regretted representing, adding that he was misled about the severity of the allegations in 2005.