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

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.

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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.

3. Mike Tyson

Former boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, pictured in November 2021. Photo: AFP

Dershowitz represented Mike Tyson after he was convicted in 1992 of raping Desiree Washington the previous year, when she was an 18-year-old Miss Black America contestant. Dershowitz attempted to get the conviction overturned, saying that the sex had been consensual, but Washington was exploiting the situation for money and publicity. Tyson’s lawyer did not prevail, however.

4. Harvey Weinstein

Harvey Weinstein appearing in court in Los Angeles, California, in October 2022. Photo: Pool Photo via AP

In February 2019, Dershowitz was confirmed to have joined Harvey Weinstein’s legal defence team as a consultant. Per The Harvard Crimson, the professor was retained to consult on “constitutional issues concerning certain email correspondence”. Weinstein was found guilty of multiple charges of rape and sexual assault, having been accused of such acts by more than 80 women. In March 2020, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

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5. Donald Trump

Former US President Donald Trump speaks from the hallway outside a courtroom where he attended a hearing in his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult star in New York City, US, on March 25. Photo: Reuters

Dershowitz represented former president Donald Trump in early 2020 in his first impeachment case, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump was eventually acquitted of both charges.

Dershowitz’s support of Trump has been a subject of debate, with the lawyer controversially stating, as reported by NBC News, “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

6. Harvard Law School

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz and boxing promoter Don King, pictured at Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1996. Photo: AP Photo

Dershowitz is a legend at Harvard Law School, where he became the youngest full professor of law in the institution’s history in 1967, at the age of 28. Impressively, he maintained his legal practice in criminal and civil law throughout his tenure at Harvard.

“I could write a 500-page book of just my hate mail,” Dershowitz told Harvard Law Today in 2013, having displayed the letters in question on his office wall. The same year, he retired from Harvard Law School at age 75 after a milestone half-century.

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‘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