July 4, 2025 • 27 mins
Emily Chang meets power lawyer Alex Spiro in Miami to discuss how he navigates the high-stakes world of litigation on behalf of famous clients like Elon Musk, Jay-Z, Megan Thee Stallion and Alec Baldwin.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Emily Chank and this is the circuit. We're in
Miami to meet with Alex Spiro, hotshot lawyer with a
bevy of famous clients like Elon Musk, jay Z, Meghan,
the Stallion, Alec Baldwin, Mister Beast. He's part lawyer, part
deal maker, part fixer. What you think of Alex Spiro
probably depends on what you think of his clients, some
(00:22):
of whom are let's just say polarizing. With the background
in psychology and an instinct for shaping public reception, Spiro
has made a name for himself defending the rich and powerful.
He claims to have never lost a case, and that
track record has carried him into the highest circles of
American wealth and influence, and many see him as capable
(00:42):
of delivering more than the typical lawyer can. I wanted
to know more about his goals and motivations, the secrets
to his success in the courtroom, and what his next
move might be. Alex Spiro, please take the stand. We're
going to start talking about your journey. Then we're going
to get into your process. Then we're going to try
(01:03):
to talk a little bit more about your clients. The
extent that you can. What was it like growing up
Alex Spiro.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm not sure, but I had a lot of fun,
played sports, ran around, caused trouble.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I think I did what most kids did.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Were you the kids starting the fights on the playground
or ending them?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I think maybe both.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Tell me about your journey to law school. How did
you decide you wanted to be a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I was a pretty ordinary teenager, played sports, had fun,
didn't really know what I wanted to be, and my
mom started taking me to volunteer at her hospital that
she worked at, and I started getting involved with different
patient populations.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I enjoyed that work.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I was a psychiatric hospital right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And eventually there, you know, they sort of said, are
you going to go to medical school?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
You don't seem like you want to go to medical school.
You should go to law school.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Because at that point I had started to advocate for
the kids and started to put my foot forward on
things I thought needed to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Probably too big.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
For my bridges, or maybe they wanted to get rid
of me, out of them, and they told me there
was a test I could take it. It wasn't too
far from the hospital. They printed it out for me.
I remember it like it was yesterday, and I went
and I took it and I went to law school.
I mean it was literally like that. No lawyers in
my family.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Did you feel like you found yourself in law school?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I think that the hospital actually is where I started
to get a sense of who I would be as
an adult in my professional life and things. And the
law school thing didn't sound crazy to me because I
had grown up watching a few good men and my
cousin Vinny repetitively, and so I remember thinking, you know,
it'd be pretty cool to be lieutenant Cafe. There was
at least something there that triggered it, and they pushed.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Me over the edge.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Your first job out of law school was at the
Manhattan DA's office, and you cracked a couple of cold
murder cases that had been unsolved for years. What did
you see that prior lawyers didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I had a great mentor at the DA's office, Bill Mahoney,
and he taught me by sort of pressure testing the
way I thought and how I analyzed things, to continuously
check myself and rethink things in different ways.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
And I think pretty early on.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I had a unique way of putting together facts and
evaluating facts and putting together those puzzle pieces that allowed
me to win trials early and solve cases early.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What's unique about it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
One thing is that I think of things psychologically why
people do what they do, not what happened, And so
if I think, well, why is this person doing this,
it may then make better sense of the jigsaw pieces.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The other thing that I try.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
To do is continuously construct and reconstruct and move the
pieces around a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So one of the.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Cases that was sort of unwinnable at the DA's office,
I basically cracked by changing the angles by which people
said that they were standing that would.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Create a different view of the forensics.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And then once I did that, it was sort of
like a magic moment where everybody said, holy cow, it
didn't happen like everybody's been saying. When you do this
and then you go look at the bullets and then
you go to the medical examiner, it happened in just
a different way that nobody could picture.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
How did it feel to put the bad guys in
jail who'd gotten away with it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In the adversary system And as a young prosecutor, it's exciting,
it's enthralling. There's something competitive about it, and I thought
I was and believed still that I was keeping the
streets safe and doing right always.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's a good feeling to win a case, to solve
the case.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
That being said, you know, given the way I look
at the world, and given what I had done before
in psychology, I often felt bad. I felt bad with
people sitting in prison. I mean, not so much the
worst of the worst, but most of the arguments I
had with my supervisors at the time were about leniency
and psychological intervention and second chances.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
My understanding is that you were also like knocking on
doors saying give me the cases you don't want. There's
a sort of a relentlessness to your style.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
That's true, and it's not a metaphor either.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I literally would go office to office and say, I've
got nothing to try this week.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Does anybody have a case they don't want to try?
And I used to try them all?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Why competitiveness probably desire to get better. I found it interesting,
and I love being in a court room.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You're defending people now, mostly who are often controversial, seem
difficult to defend. How do you decide what cases to
take now that you have your pick what cases to take.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Started when I would evaluate social justice and civil rights cases.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So people will send me.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I get letters from prison civil rights groups, human rights groups, celebrities.
Powerful people will send me, hey, will you take this
case on? When you take this issue on? And I
realized pretty early on in my career, I need to
have some sort of system, at least in my own
mind to siphon through it. So what I kind of
look at is it's a bit of return on time.
So is this case something that is going to happen
(05:44):
in a location that I can get too easily versus not.
That's a play to what I'm good at. Am I
going to be in the courtroom? When I took on
Pedro Hernandez to push the bail reform issue further, I
took on twenty one Savage to release him from ice custody.
Those were in the courtroom every day, a full action
kind of situations. When people approach me about cases of
actual innocence where someone's been sitting in jail for twenty years,
(06:07):
those cases are very tricky and maybe even five years
later you don't get a hearing, So you never have
that magic moment where you can actually change the scope
of the case. And then three, does it have an
impact outside of the case itself. So if I take
this case and make my point and win this case,
am I setting an example for other cases? Am I
changing the law on my moving society forward? So that's
(06:28):
sort of how I look at that. I think similarly,
I've now taken that blueprint and put it on trying
to figure out which case is for corporations and individuals
I should take otherwise, And at this point, frankly, unless
I find it gripping or it's somebody that gets to
me through somebody that knows me, I'm not taking lots
of cases on.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Do you have to believe in your client? Do you
have to believe that every client is innocent or justified?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I have to believe in my client, and I have
to believe in what I'm saying. Doesn't mean I believe
in everything that my client does. Doesn't mean I believe
my client is innocent in the truest sense of the
word necessarily, but it means that the painting I'm going
to put forth, what I'm saying I firmly believe in,
or I wouldn't say it.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So speaking of minds. You studied biopsychology before law. How
do you use that to get into people's heads?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Well?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I use that when I cross examine people, to read
people and to understand what's motivating them and where they're
going to get trapped, and how if they're trying to
lie to me or mislead me or hide from certain things,
how to sort of unravel that. And when I'm telling
a story, I tell stories that are sort of psychologically based.
And when I say that, what I mean is if
somebody is going to say that some minor violation of law,
(07:39):
like some an upgrade or a somebody sends a tweet
out or violated some horrific law, they have to ask themselves, well,
what was in that person's mind at the time. Were
they saying to themselves, I'm about to cross some bright
line that subjects myself to prison?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Were they really thinking that way?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So you are known. A fellow lawyer said you went
unwinnable case. What are the top three moves in the
Alex Spiro playbook?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Well, nobody can know that, but I mean the number
one rule is that no one should ever know what
I'm thinking, because if anybody knows what I'm thinking, then
they will try to pivot around me. And so that
is for sure the number one rule, and it's often
that not until opening statement or halfway through a cross
examination of a witness does anyone really know what I'm doing.
(08:27):
The second thing is I am intentionally painting a picture
as I go forward that does not reveal everything at
the start. Part of that is for the element of
the fact that nobody can predict what I'm going to
do next, but it's also because a jury or a
judge ends up having a Eureka effect. That is the
point of the adversarial system, the idea that if we're
(08:47):
fighting with each other, eventually the truth will break out.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And I firmly believe that.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So if I give an opening statement, I'm never going
to say what ultimately the end of.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The movie is going to be. That wouldn't make for
a very exciting movie.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And three going to go away from whatever I think
the traditional playbook is. It often comes back to predictability.
If they're going to play checkers with me, I don't
want to play checkers back.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So it's almost like a show for the jury.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It's the same way I would teach. It's the same
way that I would write. It's the same way if
I gave a speech, it wouldn't be so linear and
boring and uninteresting. It would have twists and turns so
that people remember it, and so people are gripped by it.
So when they get to the end, and I've had
jurors come up to me and say.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We believed in you.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
We believed that you believed in yourself, and we were
going to follow you, And so they have to go
on the journey that I went on when I figured
out what the truth was, again, my truth.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The truth of the case.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
You really thrive in the courtroom. Is it like an
adrenaline rush? Do you ever get scared anymore? Are you
ever like sweating or are you always in control?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I sweat like all people. It's definitely an adrenaline rush.
It's definitely sort of its own high, and it's the
ultimate search for the truth, search for the truth. There
are great and curious journalists and there are congressmen who
are probably trying to get at the truth. The truth
comes out in courtrooms. I've always believed that, and the
longer my career goes, the more certain of it I am.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And so I think it's very, very important.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So if it's both exciting and important, that's a pretty
interesting thing to do.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Have there ever been moments where you felt out of
control or that you'd lost control and you're trying to
win it back. What do you do in those moments.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
There are never moments in a courtroom where I feel
out of control. There are moments in a courtroom where
I know I'm taking on water, and what I try
to do is get control back, get the water out,
or change the direction of the boat something.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I think that's a testament.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
To picking issues that are important that people misunderstand and
the juris get it right.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
I read you charged three thousand dollars an hour. You're
losing money, as we.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Speak, always losing money.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I don't talk about my hourly rate, but if I
need more free time, it's getting higher.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Moving to your clients to hear how you describe some
of your top clients in one word, Elon Musk, I
didn't think this would be the toughest question of the day, but.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
In one word, you're speechless. I don't know that I'm speechless.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I'm thinking it's important to get answers to questions right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Groundbreaking Megan Thee Stallion, fearless, jay Z genius, mister Beast, dynamic,
Alec Baldwin hysterical. Yes, I agree. The victor you got
for jay Z seemed like classic you. You got the
(11:39):
case dismissed, You're coming back with a defamation suit. You
called the accuser's lawyer a one eight hundred lawyer. Why
were you so aggressive in defending him?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Because he was completely innocent and because I felt that
the system was being weaponized in an improper way.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And what does that tell you about the system?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The system is very broken.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's probably you know, we spend so much time talking
about other things, but it is one of the original
problems in this country.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
It remains to this day.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And what you can do, even by winning big cases
for prominent people who have resources, is changed the system
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Where's that case going?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You'll have to wait and say.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Elon said at one point he didn't want white chee lawyers.
He wanted hardcore street fighters. That there will be blood.
Did that speak to you?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Not particular?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
But really, what is Elon must demand in a lawyer?
You are someone who has survived in his inner circle
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
How I for better or worse. Haven't changed that much
since I was ten, I don't think. So what he
gets with me is what everybody gets with me, which
is I fight the right way, but I fight hard.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, let's talk about that. Everyone thought Elon was screwed
when it came to the SEC, and that hasn't happened
yet so far. Is that thanks to you?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Listen, the folks whose corner I'm in, I think, Oh,
some gratitude towards me. Sure I can stand up and
protect people. I think in a unique way, and that
goes for everybody that I represented.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Advice.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
So, the SEC sued Elon again just days before Trump
took office. You have said the agency has been engaged
in a multi year harassment campaign against him. What is
the status of that case or this campaign as you've
called it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, the case, which let's be clear, is a pretty
ticky tack technical violation still pens.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's pendant.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
But what about the campaign? Will the SEC stance on
Elon change now that he's playing such a prominent role
in the administration.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I'm hoping that the stance of the SEC will change,
because it should change. Which is that we shouldn't be
trophy hunting and celebrity hunting, especially as government lawyers. And
that is a major concern that I've raised over the
years and have been raising a lot lately.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
The Twitter takeover, that one got real messy. You were
in the trenches, What worked, what didn't work?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Well?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
His decision to acquire the company obviously worked. The company
is worth more than it was worth. That he is
glad he bought it. Elon is very much experimenting as
he goes, and that's part of his genius. It may
at moments look as you put it, messy, but this
(14:17):
is what the great experimenters have always done. It's just
that Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and others were
not doing it live on Twitter and for the world
to say, you only remember the experiments that worked. You
don't remember what it says in their journals, which is
that it almost never worked until it worked.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
What about the method? You know there was this report
that you guys were yelling at each other in a
conference room. How does someone like that respond to pushback,
especially when it comes to legal advice, Like, how do
you set expectations for someone like Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
My clients are all used to my pushback. Everybody advise
is used to my pushback. I don't know how they
take it. They probably cursed me out at times, but
I think ultimately when the movie's over, people will be
thankful that I told them the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
The critics say, he thinks he's above the law?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Does he? No?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
How do you know? Like, is there a practical response
when you're saying no, we cannot do that.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
When ever I've said, and people often ask me, well
if this world leader or this person or that person,
because again, ninety five percent of the people that I've
advised over the years, nobody even knows that I have
What if that person we're going to do something crazy?
What if that person had their finger on the nuclear button?
What if that person was going to break the law?
Could you stop them? I get this question seemingly every day.
(15:35):
I have faith that I could. I have faith that
none of them would run me over or break the law,
and that I have the kind of relationship and hopefully
respect that if I flew in and said don't do something,
I think people are going to.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Elon tweeted, if any judge anywhere can block every presidential
order everywhere. We do not have democracy. We have tyranny
of the judiciary. This is a direct challenge to the
legitimacy of the courts. How does that stand in your
eyes as a lawyer?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I don't It would take a lot of time to
go through every tweet, But this.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
One particularly has to do with the law.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm not so sure it has to do with me.
I have my own views on the system being broken.
They're not going to be the same as his views
and other views, but I respect the system. I'm just
trying to change it in my own way.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Okay, So how about this tapping your inner biopsychologist. What
do you think it is about Elon and Trump that
they get on together so well?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
You'd have to ask, then.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Do you think it could all end in a bad breakup?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I think they'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You have had such an unprecedented seat to this moment
in business and politics. What have you learned from this
vantage point?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Well, I've learned that my initial instinct to stay away
from politics was a wise one, even when I was
twenty five and thought jess Louise I would never go
near that because it does infect and distort things in
a pretty impactful way. I mean, I always have been
able to, no matter what the media sensationalization is of
(17:09):
something or how out of favor, somebody is be able
to pull everybody back to reality and facts and just
bring everybody back to a courtroom, tell the truth, do
the right thing, and convince the world that I'm right.
Politics is seemingly the fifth rail, and I'm watching it
infect the search for truth on all sides. It's not
(17:32):
taking a side here, and I'm sort of waiting to
see if I'm going to be able to cut through
that level of political chaos.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Well, on that note, is your role evolving as Elon
spending more time in Washington? Do you have any interest
in getting involved with Doge?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
My role is going to be the same always, okay,
which is I'm going to take on the issues I
want to take on. I'm going to advise the people
that i want to advise on the issues I want
to advise, and I'm going to move on to doing
other things with myself.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So how about this. It looks like he's taking a
hacksaw to the federal government. It looks like Twitter takeover
two point zero but the stakes are higher. How do
you view that from a legal perspective?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
That's too vague of a question.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I don't have a legal opinion on sort of the
generality of this. I will say that he has been
successful in every business venture he's ever done, with unprecedented
success in human history.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I try to not watch the day to day, hour
by hour.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Reporting on the chaos, or the reporting on the perceived chaos,
or the reporting on whatever's motivating the reporting. I'm going
to continue to watch, but obviously that's not my mandate.
My mandate is not to produce music for musicians and
write the movies for the movie directors. I'm here to
(18:54):
take on the issues that I think are important and
to fight against what I think is legal momentum and
legal overreach that shouldn't happen, and I'm hoping that that
changes the system for the better.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
One last Elon question, if you'll humor me speaking about
the rise of lawsuits. They're a big part of his playbook.
Lawsuits are a big part of Elon's playbook. He's suing
open AI is trying to take over open AI. Like
sometimes it's hard to take that seriously. What would you
say to people who don't believe it, or understand it,
or feel like it's not real.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, this idea that Elon and his orbit have a
lot of lawsuits. You know, the size of his entire
empire is a nation state. It is bigger than most countries,
It is more complicated than many and so it's inevitable.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That it leads to lots of litigation.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I'm sure that the percentage of cases against Elon and
his companies versus the ones they start is something in
the order of ninety eight percent to two percent. You've
got to remember that. And third is he's just not
going to back down if he thinks he's right. That's
just the bottom line.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
How much are you two still working together? What's your
relationship status?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Elin and I work closely together.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, you're a lawyer, you're a sworn officer of the court.
How do you tell the line when it comes to
pushing the boundaries on legal theories easily?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Which is that I don't ever argue something or say
something in court that I don't.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Believe to be true and supported by the facts of
the law.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
But I'm also not afraid to make a creative argument
or tell the truth when it's otherwise than popular.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Exactly, Let's talk about the creativity. Tell me about that process. Like,
I know, you do a lot of research. You're on
the front lines. You're reading stuff that maybe other big
time lawyers wouldn't read or they have their team do it.
You're very in the details and the weeds, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yes, And all I can say is, I'm an idea
minute kind of person. Once I'm getting sort of in
my creative environment, and that is trying cases is my
creative environment, and so I'm trying to come up with
creative ideas, and a lot of them don't work. The
only ones everybody sees to become public are the ones
that are legal, ethical, factually accurate and proper and that
(21:03):
I think are going to win. And so on the
cutting board, if I say, well, what if I did this,
or what if I did that? If it's not allowed,
not supported by the law, not proper, it's not going
to come out.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You also represent mayor Eric Adams? Was that creative?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I think everything that I do has a touch of creativity.
I'm not just following some playbook. I think the fact
that they tried to run him out of town and
take him down for this stupid case. I think my
ability to stand my ground and stand my ground for
him is forceful, whether creative or not.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There was a public outcry in response to the result.
There mass resignations, people who say they've lost faith in
the justice system. What's your response to the response, Well.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
When you say mass resignations.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Lawyers resigned, yeah, lawyers resigned.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The small group of lawyers that were involved in this
case effectively decided together to resign. Right, grudge them their resignations.
I also don't take much from it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But they resigned in a blaze of glory. I mean,
there was quite a letter to accompany the resignations.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
They may think or have intended to resign in a
blaze of glory.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
I don't see it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I frankly would have resigned by just simply saying I'm
not going to dismiss this case.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
That actions speak.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Louder than could buy letter words. But it's their prerogative
to resign. How they wanted to resign within the bounds
of the law, which is another problem that they're going
to have.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
But it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
What is your appetite for risk.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Higher than the average lawyer, Probably.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
What cases don't you take.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Ninety nine percent of the cases that come to me.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
There has to be something about the risk that is thrilling. Right,
It's not worth it unless it feels like it's a challenge.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Any case that you're referencing or asking me about is
a case in which the other side of the case
wants to win just as badly, and they have the
upper hand presumably or they wouldn't have brought the case.
And if it's the government, they have more resources and
they have the momentum of public perception. And so anytime
I step into a case when you say risk, I
(23:16):
should lose just by the percentages. So of course, the
excitement I think importance frankly, that drives the excitement of
being able to stand my ground and stand up for
what I think is right is absolutely something that draws
me in and drives me.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
What have you learned about the needs of powerful people?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I think people are people, the people that are as
you call them, powerful, that are going through more things
and more complicated things because of media attention, politics, the
complications of their businesses. It's just that the problems get
more complicated.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
You know, we talked about why people call you, And
obviously a lot has to do with the result. But
what else do you think you give them? I mean,
then people are giving are trusting you heart heardedly with everything,
their deepest, darkest secrets. What do you offer is it
complete discretion?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think people trust me because they know that I
will keep their confidences, and they trust me to protect
them because they know that I will protect them. And
I think that people know that I'll give them what
I think is the correct judgment, whether it's unpopular or not.
So if they come to me and they say we
want to go down road number one and I say
that's a bad idea, they know I'll say it's a
bad idea.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They know I won't just tell them what they want
to hear.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, you're flying close to the sun like all the time.
How hot does it get up there?
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I don't think I'm that close.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You're pretty close.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think that if I'm doing what I think is right,
and I fight hard and I have to go up
in the sky to keep fighting, I think that by
doing what I think is right, I'll land back on
the earth and be victorious.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
You started your career in the criminal justice system when
you're not representing high profile clients. You're on the board
of the reform Alliance, you lecture at universities, you take
on on full convictions. What's broken about the system?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Pretty much everything?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
The system is backwards, racists, draconian. I can't say enough
bad about it. I'm hoping it changes, and it's changing
over time, and I'm hoping that some of these cases
move things forward, like bail reform, like twenty one Savage
and immigration issues, and that's my little way.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Of doing what I would like to do even more of.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
So what needs to be done to fix it? I
I realize that's a big question. But what needs to
be fixed?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
First of all, the question is, well, what's broken?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I mean, putting people in jail on bail because they
don't have the economic means to afford bail is not
a just system. We incarcerate a higher percentage of the
population than any other country on Earth. We incarcerate black
and brown people in this country at six seven times
the rate as people that are white.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Or not black and brown.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The system has hopefully become at least slightly more fair
to different people of different means and different races, but
only marginally so and so.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
We've got to.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Equal out resources, we've got to keep our eyes open
to these real issues, and we've got to keep fighting.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Does it ever feel like we're moving backwards?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Sure it does, and it may be one of those
one step forward, two steps backwards. And sometimes there are
these moments, these igniting moments. It happened with the Black
Lives Matter movement where it grips the society as a
whole and people say, well, wait a second. It happened
with Rodney King. People say, and the society says, wait
(26:33):
a second. But the question is how to carry that
forward in a way. And I believe that cases can
do that. I believe that lawyers that take on major cases,
who have a credibility amongst others, if they take on
big cases that are important for society and they fight
hard and they fight right, that helps move society forward.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the Circuit.
You can catch the full episode on Bloomberg Originals. I'm
Emily Chang, follow me on x and Instagram at Emily
Chang TV, and you can watch new episodes of the
Circuit on Bloomberg Television or streaming on the Bloomberg, Gap
or YouTube and let us know what you think by
leaving a review. Those extra reviews, they really make a difference.
(27:14):
I'm your host and executive producer. Our senior producer is
Lauren Ellis. Our associate producer is Heather Glover Huang. Our
editor is Alison Casey. Thanks so much for listening.
I'm Emily Chank and this is the circuit. We're in
Miami to meet with Alex Spiro, hotshot lawyer with a
bevy of famous clients like Elon Musk, jay Z, Meghan,
the Stallion, Alec Baldwin, Mister Beast. He's part lawyer, part
deal maker, part fixer. What you think of Alex Spiro
probably depends on what you think of his clients, some
(00:22):
of whom are let's just say polarizing. With the background
in psychology and an instinct for shaping public reception, Spiro
has made a name for himself defending the rich and powerful.
He claims to have never lost a case, and that
track record has carried him into the highest circles of
American wealth and influence, and many see him as capable
(00:42):
of delivering more than the typical lawyer can. I wanted
to know more about his goals and motivations, the secrets
to his success in the courtroom, and what his next
move might be. Alex Spiro, please take the stand. We're
going to start talking about your journey. Then we're going
to get into your process. Then we're going to try
(01:03):
to talk a little bit more about your clients. The
extent that you can. What was it like growing up
Alex Spiro.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm not sure, but I had a lot of fun,
played sports, ran around, caused trouble.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I think I did what most kids did.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Were you the kids starting the fights on the playground
or ending them?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I think maybe both.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Tell me about your journey to law school. How did
you decide you wanted to be a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I was a pretty ordinary teenager, played sports, had fun,
didn't really know what I wanted to be, and my
mom started taking me to volunteer at her hospital that
she worked at, and I started getting involved with different
patient populations.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I enjoyed that work.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I was a psychiatric hospital right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And eventually there, you know, they sort of said, are
you going to go to medical school?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
You don't seem like you want to go to medical school.
You should go to law school.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Because at that point I had started to advocate for
the kids and started to put my foot forward on
things I thought needed to happen.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Probably too big.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
For my bridges, or maybe they wanted to get rid
of me, out of them, and they told me there
was a test I could take it. It wasn't too
far from the hospital. They printed it out for me.
I remember it like it was yesterday, and I went
and I took it and I went to law school.
I mean it was literally like that. No lawyers in
my family.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Did you feel like you found yourself in law school?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I think that the hospital actually is where I started
to get a sense of who I would be as
an adult in my professional life and things. And the
law school thing didn't sound crazy to me because I
had grown up watching a few good men and my
cousin Vinny repetitively, and so I remember thinking, you know,
it'd be pretty cool to be lieutenant Cafe. There was
at least something there that triggered it, and they pushed.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Me over the edge.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Your first job out of law school was at the
Manhattan DA's office, and you cracked a couple of cold
murder cases that had been unsolved for years. What did
you see that prior lawyers didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I had a great mentor at the DA's office, Bill Mahoney,
and he taught me by sort of pressure testing the
way I thought and how I analyzed things, to continuously
check myself and rethink things in different ways.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
And I think pretty early on.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I had a unique way of putting together facts and
evaluating facts and putting together those puzzle pieces that allowed
me to win trials early and solve cases early.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What's unique about it.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
One thing is that I think of things psychologically why
people do what they do, not what happened, And so
if I think, well, why is this person doing this,
it may then make better sense of the jigsaw pieces.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The other thing that I try.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
To do is continuously construct and reconstruct and move the
pieces around a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So one of the.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Cases that was sort of unwinnable at the DA's office,
I basically cracked by changing the angles by which people
said that they were standing that would.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Create a different view of the forensics.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And then once I did that, it was sort of
like a magic moment where everybody said, holy cow, it
didn't happen like everybody's been saying. When you do this
and then you go look at the bullets and then
you go to the medical examiner, it happened in just
a different way that nobody could picture.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
How did it feel to put the bad guys in
jail who'd gotten away with it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In the adversary system And as a young prosecutor, it's exciting,
it's enthralling. There's something competitive about it, and I thought
I was and believed still that I was keeping the
streets safe and doing right always.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's a good feeling to win a case, to solve
the case.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
That being said, you know, given the way I look
at the world, and given what I had done before
in psychology, I often felt bad. I felt bad with
people sitting in prison. I mean, not so much the
worst of the worst, but most of the arguments I
had with my supervisors at the time were about leniency
and psychological intervention and second chances.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
My understanding is that you were also like knocking on
doors saying give me the cases you don't want. There's
a sort of a relentlessness to your style.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
That's true, and it's not a metaphor either.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I literally would go office to office and say, I've
got nothing to try this week.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Does anybody have a case they don't want to try?
And I used to try them all?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Why competitiveness probably desire to get better. I found it interesting,
and I love being in a court room.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You're defending people now, mostly who are often controversial, seem
difficult to defend. How do you decide what cases to
take now that you have your pick what cases to take.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Started when I would evaluate social justice and civil rights cases.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
So people will send me.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I get letters from prison civil rights groups, human rights groups, celebrities.
Powerful people will send me, hey, will you take this
case on? When you take this issue on? And I
realized pretty early on in my career, I need to
have some sort of system, at least in my own
mind to siphon through it. So what I kind of
look at is it's a bit of return on time.
So is this case something that is going to happen
(05:44):
in a location that I can get too easily versus not.
That's a play to what I'm good at. Am I
going to be in the courtroom? When I took on
Pedro Hernandez to push the bail reform issue further, I
took on twenty one Savage to release him from ice custody.
Those were in the courtroom every day, a full action
kind of situations. When people approach me about cases of
actual innocence where someone's been sitting in jail for twenty years,
(06:07):
those cases are very tricky and maybe even five years
later you don't get a hearing, So you never have
that magic moment where you can actually change the scope
of the case. And then three, does it have an
impact outside of the case itself. So if I take
this case and make my point and win this case,
am I setting an example for other cases? Am I
changing the law on my moving society forward? So that's
(06:28):
sort of how I look at that. I think similarly,
I've now taken that blueprint and put it on trying
to figure out which case is for corporations and individuals
I should take otherwise, And at this point, frankly, unless
I find it gripping or it's somebody that gets to
me through somebody that knows me, I'm not taking lots
of cases on.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Do you have to believe in your client? Do you
have to believe that every client is innocent or justified?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I have to believe in my client, and I have
to believe in what I'm saying. Doesn't mean I believe
in everything that my client does. Doesn't mean I believe
my client is innocent in the truest sense of the
word necessarily, but it means that the painting I'm going
to put forth, what I'm saying I firmly believe in,
or I wouldn't say it.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So speaking of minds. You studied biopsychology before law. How
do you use that to get into people's heads?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Well?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I use that when I cross examine people, to read
people and to understand what's motivating them and where they're
going to get trapped, and how if they're trying to
lie to me or mislead me or hide from certain things,
how to sort of unravel that. And when I'm telling
a story, I tell stories that are sort of psychologically based.
And when I say that, what I mean is if
somebody is going to say that some minor violation of law,
(07:39):
like some an upgrade or a somebody sends a tweet
out or violated some horrific law, they have to ask themselves, well,
what was in that person's mind at the time. Were
they saying to themselves, I'm about to cross some bright
line that subjects myself to prison?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Were they really thinking that way?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So you are known. A fellow lawyer said you went
unwinnable case. What are the top three moves in the
Alex Spiro playbook?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Well, nobody can know that, but I mean the number
one rule is that no one should ever know what
I'm thinking, because if anybody knows what I'm thinking, then
they will try to pivot around me. And so that
is for sure the number one rule, and it's often
that not until opening statement or halfway through a cross
examination of a witness does anyone really know what I'm doing.
(08:27):
The second thing is I am intentionally painting a picture
as I go forward that does not reveal everything at
the start. Part of that is for the element of
the fact that nobody can predict what I'm going to
do next, but it's also because a jury or a
judge ends up having a Eureka effect. That is the
point of the adversarial system, the idea that if we're
(08:47):
fighting with each other, eventually the truth will break out.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And I firmly believe that.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So if I give an opening statement, I'm never going
to say what ultimately the end of.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
The movie is going to be. That wouldn't make for
a very exciting movie.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And three going to go away from whatever I think
the traditional playbook is. It often comes back to predictability.
If they're going to play checkers with me, I don't
want to play checkers back.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
So it's almost like a show for the jury.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It's the same way I would teach. It's the same
way that I would write. It's the same way if
I gave a speech, it wouldn't be so linear and
boring and uninteresting. It would have twists and turns so
that people remember it, and so people are gripped by it.
So when they get to the end, and I've had
jurors come up to me and say.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We believed in you.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
We believed that you believed in yourself, and we were
going to follow you, And so they have to go
on the journey that I went on when I figured
out what the truth was, again, my truth.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The truth of the case.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
You really thrive in the courtroom. Is it like an
adrenaline rush? Do you ever get scared anymore? Are you
ever like sweating or are you always in control?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I sweat like all people. It's definitely an adrenaline rush.
It's definitely sort of its own high, and it's the
ultimate search for the truth, search for the truth. There
are great and curious journalists and there are congressmen who
are probably trying to get at the truth. The truth
comes out in courtrooms. I've always believed that, and the
longer my career goes, the more certain of it I am.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
And so I think it's very, very important.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So if it's both exciting and important, that's a pretty
interesting thing to do.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Have there ever been moments where you felt out of
control or that you'd lost control and you're trying to
win it back. What do you do in those moments.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
There are never moments in a courtroom where I feel
out of control. There are moments in a courtroom where
I know I'm taking on water, and what I try
to do is get control back, get the water out,
or change the direction of the boat something.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I think that's a testament.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
To picking issues that are important that people misunderstand and
the juris get it right.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
I read you charged three thousand dollars an hour. You're
losing money, as we.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Speak, always losing money.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I don't talk about my hourly rate, but if I
need more free time, it's getting higher.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Moving to your clients to hear how you describe some
of your top clients in one word, Elon Musk, I
didn't think this would be the toughest question of the day, but.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
In one word, you're speechless. I don't know that I'm speechless.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I'm thinking it's important to get answers to questions right.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Groundbreaking Megan Thee Stallion, fearless, jay Z genius, mister Beast, dynamic,
Alec Baldwin hysterical. Yes, I agree. The victor you got
for jay Z seemed like classic you. You got the
(11:39):
case dismissed, You're coming back with a defamation suit. You
called the accuser's lawyer a one eight hundred lawyer. Why
were you so aggressive in defending him?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Because he was completely innocent and because I felt that
the system was being weaponized in an improper way.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And what does that tell you about the system?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The system is very broken.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's probably you know, we spend so much time talking
about other things, but it is one of the original
problems in this country.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
It remains to this day.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And what you can do, even by winning big cases
for prominent people who have resources, is changed the system
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Where's that case going?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You'll have to wait and say.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Elon said at one point he didn't want white chee lawyers.
He wanted hardcore street fighters. That there will be blood.
Did that speak to you?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Not particular?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
But really, what is Elon must demand in a lawyer?
You are someone who has survived in his inner circle
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
How I for better or worse. Haven't changed that much
since I was ten, I don't think. So what he
gets with me is what everybody gets with me, which
is I fight the right way, but I fight hard.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, let's talk about that. Everyone thought Elon was screwed
when it came to the SEC, and that hasn't happened
yet so far. Is that thanks to you?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Listen, the folks whose corner I'm in, I think, Oh,
some gratitude towards me. Sure I can stand up and
protect people. I think in a unique way, and that
goes for everybody that I represented.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Advice.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
So, the SEC sued Elon again just days before Trump
took office. You have said the agency has been engaged
in a multi year harassment campaign against him. What is
the status of that case or this campaign as you've
called it.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, the case, which let's be clear, is a pretty
ticky tack technical violation still pens.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's pendant.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
But what about the campaign? Will the SEC stance on
Elon change now that he's playing such a prominent role
in the administration.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I'm hoping that the stance of the SEC will change,
because it should change. Which is that we shouldn't be
trophy hunting and celebrity hunting, especially as government lawyers. And
that is a major concern that I've raised over the
years and have been raising a lot lately.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
The Twitter takeover, that one got real messy. You were
in the trenches, What worked, what didn't work?
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Well?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
His decision to acquire the company obviously worked. The company
is worth more than it was worth. That he is
glad he bought it. Elon is very much experimenting as
he goes, and that's part of his genius. It may
at moments look as you put it, messy, but this
(14:17):
is what the great experimenters have always done. It's just
that Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and others were
not doing it live on Twitter and for the world
to say, you only remember the experiments that worked. You
don't remember what it says in their journals, which is
that it almost never worked until it worked.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
What about the method? You know there was this report
that you guys were yelling at each other in a
conference room. How does someone like that respond to pushback,
especially when it comes to legal advice, Like, how do
you set expectations for someone like Elon Musk.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
My clients are all used to my pushback. Everybody advise
is used to my pushback. I don't know how they
take it. They probably cursed me out at times, but
I think ultimately when the movie's over, people will be
thankful that I told them the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
The critics say, he thinks he's above the law?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Does he? No?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
How do you know? Like, is there a practical response
when you're saying no, we cannot do that.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
When ever I've said, and people often ask me, well
if this world leader or this person or that person,
because again, ninety five percent of the people that I've
advised over the years, nobody even knows that I have
What if that person we're going to do something crazy?
What if that person had their finger on the nuclear button?
What if that person was going to break the law?
Could you stop them? I get this question seemingly every day.
(15:35):
I have faith that I could. I have faith that
none of them would run me over or break the law,
and that I have the kind of relationship and hopefully
respect that if I flew in and said don't do something,
I think people are going to.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Elon tweeted, if any judge anywhere can block every presidential
order everywhere. We do not have democracy. We have tyranny
of the judiciary. This is a direct challenge to the
legitimacy of the courts. How does that stand in your
eyes as a lawyer?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I don't It would take a lot of time to
go through every tweet, But this.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
One particularly has to do with the law.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm not so sure it has to do with me.
I have my own views on the system being broken.
They're not going to be the same as his views
and other views, but I respect the system. I'm just
trying to change it in my own way.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Okay, So how about this tapping your inner biopsychologist. What
do you think it is about Elon and Trump that
they get on together so well?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
You'd have to ask, then.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Do you think it could all end in a bad breakup?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I think they'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You have had such an unprecedented seat to this moment
in business and politics. What have you learned from this
vantage point?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Well, I've learned that my initial instinct to stay away
from politics was a wise one, even when I was
twenty five and thought jess Louise I would never go
near that because it does infect and distort things in
a pretty impactful way. I mean, I always have been
able to, no matter what the media sensationalization is of
(17:09):
something or how out of favor, somebody is be able
to pull everybody back to reality and facts and just
bring everybody back to a courtroom, tell the truth, do
the right thing, and convince the world that I'm right.
Politics is seemingly the fifth rail, and I'm watching it
infect the search for truth on all sides. It's not
(17:32):
taking a side here, and I'm sort of waiting to
see if I'm going to be able to cut through
that level of political chaos.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Well, on that note, is your role evolving as Elon
spending more time in Washington? Do you have any interest
in getting involved with Doge?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
My role is going to be the same always, okay,
which is I'm going to take on the issues I
want to take on. I'm going to advise the people
that i want to advise on the issues I want
to advise, and I'm going to move on to doing
other things with myself.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So how about this. It looks like he's taking a
hacksaw to the federal government. It looks like Twitter takeover
two point zero but the stakes are higher. How do
you view that from a legal perspective?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
That's too vague of a question.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I don't have a legal opinion on sort of the
generality of this. I will say that he has been
successful in every business venture he's ever done, with unprecedented
success in human history.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I try to not watch the day to day, hour
by hour.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Reporting on the chaos, or the reporting on the perceived chaos,
or the reporting on whatever's motivating the reporting. I'm going
to continue to watch, but obviously that's not my mandate.
My mandate is not to produce music for musicians and
write the movies for the movie directors. I'm here to
(18:54):
take on the issues that I think are important and
to fight against what I think is legal momentum and
legal overreach that shouldn't happen, and I'm hoping that that
changes the system for the better.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
One last Elon question, if you'll humor me speaking about
the rise of lawsuits. They're a big part of his playbook.
Lawsuits are a big part of Elon's playbook. He's suing
open AI is trying to take over open AI. Like
sometimes it's hard to take that seriously. What would you
say to people who don't believe it, or understand it,
or feel like it's not real.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Well, this idea that Elon and his orbit have a
lot of lawsuits. You know, the size of his entire
empire is a nation state. It is bigger than most countries,
It is more complicated than many and so it's inevitable.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
That it leads to lots of litigation.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I'm sure that the percentage of cases against Elon and
his companies versus the ones they start is something in
the order of ninety eight percent to two percent. You've
got to remember that. And third is he's just not
going to back down if he thinks he's right. That's
just the bottom line.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
How much are you two still working together? What's your
relationship status?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Elin and I work closely together.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, you're a lawyer, you're a sworn officer of the court.
How do you tell the line when it comes to
pushing the boundaries on legal theories easily?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Which is that I don't ever argue something or say
something in court that I don't.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Believe to be true and supported by the facts of
the law.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
But I'm also not afraid to make a creative argument
or tell the truth when it's otherwise than popular.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Exactly, Let's talk about the creativity. Tell me about that process. Like,
I know, you do a lot of research. You're on
the front lines. You're reading stuff that maybe other big
time lawyers wouldn't read or they have their team do it.
You're very in the details and the weeds, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yes, And all I can say is, I'm an idea
minute kind of person. Once I'm getting sort of in
my creative environment, and that is trying cases is my
creative environment, and so I'm trying to come up with
creative ideas, and a lot of them don't work. The
only ones everybody sees to become public are the ones
that are legal, ethical, factually accurate and proper and that
(21:03):
I think are going to win. And so on the
cutting board, if I say, well, what if I did this,
or what if I did that? If it's not allowed,
not supported by the law, not proper, it's not going
to come out.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You also represent mayor Eric Adams? Was that creative?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I think everything that I do has a touch of creativity.
I'm not just following some playbook. I think the fact
that they tried to run him out of town and
take him down for this stupid case. I think my
ability to stand my ground and stand my ground for
him is forceful, whether creative or not.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
There was a public outcry in response to the result.
There mass resignations, people who say they've lost faith in
the justice system. What's your response to the response, Well.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
When you say mass resignations.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Lawyers resigned, yeah, lawyers resigned.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The small group of lawyers that were involved in this
case effectively decided together to resign. Right, grudge them their resignations.
I also don't take much from it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But they resigned in a blaze of glory. I mean,
there was quite a letter to accompany the resignations.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
They may think or have intended to resign in a
blaze of glory.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
I don't see it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I frankly would have resigned by just simply saying I'm
not going to dismiss this case.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
That actions speak.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Louder than could buy letter words. But it's their prerogative
to resign. How they wanted to resign within the bounds
of the law, which is another problem that they're going
to have.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
But it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
What is your appetite for risk.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Higher than the average lawyer, Probably.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
What cases don't you take.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Ninety nine percent of the cases that come to me.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
There has to be something about the risk that is thrilling. Right,
It's not worth it unless it feels like it's a challenge.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Any case that you're referencing or asking me about is
a case in which the other side of the case
wants to win just as badly, and they have the
upper hand presumably or they wouldn't have brought the case.
And if it's the government, they have more resources and
they have the momentum of public perception. And so anytime
I step into a case when you say risk, I
(23:16):
should lose just by the percentages. So of course, the
excitement I think importance frankly, that drives the excitement of
being able to stand my ground and stand up for
what I think is right is absolutely something that draws
me in and drives me.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
What have you learned about the needs of powerful people?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I think people are people, the people that are as
you call them, powerful, that are going through more things
and more complicated things because of media attention, politics, the
complications of their businesses. It's just that the problems get
more complicated.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
You know, we talked about why people call you, And
obviously a lot has to do with the result. But
what else do you think you give them? I mean,
then people are giving are trusting you heart heardedly with everything,
their deepest, darkest secrets. What do you offer is it
complete discretion?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think people trust me because they know that I
will keep their confidences, and they trust me to protect
them because they know that I will protect them. And
I think that people know that I'll give them what
I think is the correct judgment, whether it's unpopular or not.
So if they come to me and they say we
want to go down road number one and I say
that's a bad idea, they know I'll say it's a
bad idea.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They know I won't just tell them what they want
to hear.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, you're flying close to the sun like all the time.
How hot does it get up there?
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I don't think I'm that close.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You're pretty close.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think that if I'm doing what I think is right,
and I fight hard and I have to go up
in the sky to keep fighting, I think that by
doing what I think is right, I'll land back on
the earth and be victorious.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
You started your career in the criminal justice system when
you're not representing high profile clients. You're on the board
of the reform Alliance, you lecture at universities, you take
on on full convictions. What's broken about the system?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Pretty much everything?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
The system is backwards, racists, draconian. I can't say enough
bad about it. I'm hoping it changes, and it's changing
over time, and I'm hoping that some of these cases
move things forward, like bail reform, like twenty one Savage
and immigration issues, and that's my little way.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Of doing what I would like to do even more of.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
So what needs to be done to fix it? I
I realize that's a big question. But what needs to
be fixed?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
First of all, the question is, well, what's broken?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I mean, putting people in jail on bail because they
don't have the economic means to afford bail is not
a just system. We incarcerate a higher percentage of the
population than any other country on Earth. We incarcerate black
and brown people in this country at six seven times
the rate as people that are white.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Or not black and brown.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
The system has hopefully become at least slightly more fair
to different people of different means and different races, but
only marginally so and so.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
We've got to.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Equal out resources, we've got to keep our eyes open
to these real issues, and we've got to keep fighting.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Does it ever feel like we're moving backwards?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Sure it does, and it may be one of those
one step forward, two steps backwards. And sometimes there are
these moments, these igniting moments. It happened with the Black
Lives Matter movement where it grips the society as a
whole and people say, well, wait a second. It happened
with Rodney King. People say, and the society says, wait
(26:33):
a second. But the question is how to carry that
forward in a way. And I believe that cases can
do that. I believe that lawyers that take on major cases,
who have a credibility amongst others, if they take on
big cases that are important for society and they fight
hard and they fight right, that helps move society forward.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the Circuit.
You can catch the full episode on Bloomberg Originals. I'm
Emily Chang, follow me on x and Instagram at Emily
Chang TV, and you can watch new episodes of the
Circuit on Bloomberg Television or streaming on the Bloomberg, Gap
or YouTube and let us know what you think by
leaving a review. Those extra reviews, they really make a difference.
(27:14):
I'm your host and executive producer. Our senior producer is
Lauren Ellis. Our associate producer is Heather Glover Huang. Our
editor is Alison Casey. Thanks so much for listening.
Host
Emily Chang
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