Notable clients
Dershowitz's clients have included such high-profile figures as Patty Hearst, Leona Helmsley, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, Michael Milken, O. J. Simpson, Kirtanananda Swami, Jeffrey Epstein, and Donald Trump.
In 1976, Dershowitz handled the successful appeal of Harry Reems, who had been convicted of distribution of obscenity resulting from acting in the pornographic movie Deep Throat. Dershowitz argued against censorship of pornography on First Amendment grounds and maintained that consumption of pornography was not harmful.
In one of his first high-profile cases, Dershowitz represented Claus von Bülow, a British socialite, on appeal for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow, who went into a coma in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1980 (and later died in 2008). He succeeded in having the conviction overturned, and von Bülow was acquitted in a retrial. Dershowitz told the story of the case in his book Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow case (1985), which was adapted into a movie in 1990. Dershowitz was played by actor Ron Silver, and Dershowitz himself had a cameo as a judge.
In his book Taking the Stand, Dershowitz recounts that von Bülow had a dinner party after he was found not guilty at his retrial. Dershowitz told him that he would not attend if it was a "victory party," and von Bülow assured him that it was only a dinner for "several interesting friends." Norman Mailer attended the dinner where, among other things, Dershowitz explained why the evidence pointed to von Bülow's innocence. Dershowitz described Mailer grabbing his wife's arm and saying: "Let's get out of here. I think this guy is innocent. I thought we were going to be having dinner with a man who actually tried to kill his wife. This is boring."
In 1989, Dershowitz filed a defamation suit against Cardinal Józef Glemp, then Archbishop of Warsaw, on behalf of Rabbi Avi Weiss. That summer, Weiss and six other members of New York's Jewish community had staged a protest at the Auschwitz concentration camp over the presence of a controversial convent of Carmelite nuns. Weiss and the protesters were ejected after attempting to scale a wall surrounding the convent. In an August 1989 speech, Glemp referenced the incident and ascribed a violent intent to the protesters, saying, "Recently, a squad of seven Jews from New York launched an attack on the convent at Oswiecim [Auschwitz]. They did not kill the nuns or destroy the convent only because they were stopped." In the same speech, Glemp made antisemitic remarks suggesting that Jews control the news media. The lawsuit centered on these statements. His account of the lawsuit appears in his 1991 book Chutzpah.
In 1990, the federal government indicted Kīrtanānanda Swami on five counts of racketeering, six counts of mail fraud, and conspiracy to murder two of his opponents in the Hare Krishna movement (Stephen Bryant and Charles St. Denis). The government claimed that Kīrtanānanda had illegally amassed a profit of more than $10.5 million over four years. It also charged that he ordered the killings because the victims had threatened to reveal his sexual abuse of minors.
On March 29, 1991, Kīrtanānanda was convicted on nine of the 11 charges (the jury failed to reach a verdict on the murder charges), but the Court of Appeals was convinced by Dershowitz's defense and threw out the convictions, saying that child molestation evidence had unfairly prejudiced the jury against Kīrtanānanda, who was not charged with those crimes.
During the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, Dershowitz acted as an appellate adviser to Simpson's defense team, and later wrote a book about it, Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O. J. Simpson Case (1996). Dershowitz wrote: "the Simpson case will not be remembered in the next century. It will not rank as one of the trials of the century. It will not rank with the Nuremberg trials, the Rosenberg trial, Sacco and Vanzetti. It is on par with Leopold and Loeb and the Lindbergh case, all involving celebrities. It is also not one of the most important cases of my own career. I would rank it somewhere in the middle in terms of interest and importance." The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history.
Dershowitz was a member of the legal defense team for the first criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein, who was investigated after accusations that he had repeatedly solicited sex from minors. Dershowitz had previously befriended Epstein through their mutual acquaintance Lynn Forester de Rothschild.
In 2006, Dershowitz was involved in efforts to discredit Epstein's young accusers.
The first investigation into Epstein concluded with a controversial non-prosecution agreement that Dershowitz helped negotiate; in June 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The agreement had been approved by Alexander Acosta, then the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. In February 2019, Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that federal prosecutors had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act by concluding the agreement without notifying Epstein's victims. In 2021 the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, denied a victim's petition asserting that prosecutors had violated her rights under the Act, holding that it provides no judicial remedy before formal charges are filed.
In 2018 Dershowitz claimed to have broken off social contact with Epstein while still giving him legal advice.
In April 2019, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre filed a federal civil defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz in New York. It was dismissed on November 8, 2022, and no fees were awarded to either side.
In 2025, Dershowitz said he was aware of the names associated with the Epstein list but was bound by confidentiality. It was reported that he had contributed a mocked-up fictional excerpt from Vanity Fair magazine to Jeffrey Epstein's 2003 birthday book. According to Bloomberg, Epstein gave Dershowitz's wife a new Lexus as a gift. Dershowitz said this was part of his legal fee, as his wife would drive Epstein around.
In April 2019, Dershowitz sent a letter urging the Pulitzer Prize judges not to reward the Miami Herald investigation by Julie K. Brown that had reopened the Epstein case, calling it "fake news". Brown's reporting was not a finalist that year. Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor of The Denver Post, who led one of the juries that vetted entries in the categories the Herald was thought to be a contender in, said there were "no outside pressures" on the decision, attributing the result to strong entries from other news organizations. In 2026, Brown was awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation for the reporting.
In 2011, Dershowitz served as a consultant for Julian Assange's legal team while Assange was facing the prospect of charges from the U.S. government for distributing classified documents through WikiLeaks. Of his decision to engage with Assange's team, Dershowitz said that Assange should be considered a journalist, adding, "I believe that to protect the First Amendment we need to protect new electronic media vigorously".
In May 2018, Dershowitz joined Harvey Weinstein's legal team as a consultant for Weinstein's lawyer Benjamin Brafman. Dershowitz advised the team on obtaining documents from The Weinstein Company related to the sexual abuse allegations against Weinstein.
In January 2020, Dershowitz joined President Donald Trump's legal team as Trump was being tried on impeachment charges in the Senate. Dershowitz's addition to the team was notable, as commentators pointed out that he was a Hillary Clinton supporter and had offered occasionally controversial television defenses of Trump in the preceding two years. The statement announcing Dershowitz's joining the team said that Dershowitz was "nonpartisan when it comes to the Constitution." Dershowitz said he would not accept any compensation, and if he was paid anything, he would donate it to charity. He defended his representation of Trump, which was controversial among Trump critics, saying, "I'm there to try to defend the integrity of the constitution. That benefits President Trump in this case." Dershowitz said that his role would be limited to presenting oral arguments before the Senate opposing impeachment.
In his oral arguments, Dershowitz said that proof of a crime is required to impeach a president. Some commentators suggested that his position contradicted his statements during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when he said no proof of a crime was required. Dershowitz later retracted his statements made during the Clinton era, saying, "To the extent there are inconsistencies between my current position and what I said 22 years ago, I am correct today .... During the Clinton impeachment, the issue was not whether a technical crime was required, because he was charged with perjury."
Some of his comments were considered to represent an overly expansive view of executive power. He argued, "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." Dershowitz later said his comment was mischaracterized: "a president seeking reelection cannot do anything he wants. He is not above the law. He cannot commit crimes." In 2020, Dershowitz sued CNN for alleged mischaracterization of his comments amounting to defamation. He set up a legal defense fund to cover his expenses in the lawsuit and, in 2022, CNN asked the court to force the fund to disclose its donors. Later in the year the court ordered the disclosure. The judge ruled against Dershowitz on the defamation issue in 2023. In June 2026, the Supreme Court refused to revive the suit.
After the trial, Dershowitz used his ties with the Trump administration to lobby it to give clemency to his various other clients. He played a role in at least 12 clemency grants, as well as unsuccessfully lobbying the administration to commute the 10-year sentence of George Nader, who had pleaded guilty to child pornography and sex trafficking.
