Very few lawyers are household names. Robert Shapiro is one of them. That’s because, well, he’s spent a lot of time in your household. First as O.J. Simpson’s attorney in the Trial of the Century that was broadcast non-stop, and captivated the country, for eight months in 1995. More recently Shapiro has been in your den as the public face of LegalZoom, telling you for years in the company’s commercials that they put the law on your side.

While these things have made Shapiro famous, there is a lot more to his career than O.J. and LegalZoom. A real lot. Mr. Shapiro was kind enough to speak with me about his long and impressive career, the impact of the Simpson case and few other things along the way.

No One Trick Pony

I called Shapiro’s Los Angeles office of hundred or so-attorney firm Glaser Weil Fink Jacobs & Shapiro LLP at the appointed time and waited while his assistant patched me into his car. That Robert Shapiro was speaking to me while driving in Century City just added to the experience of being on the phone with one of the all-time biggest celebrity lawyers. I didn’t ask him this, but even-money (or maybe even 5:4) says he was wearing four-figure sunglasses. At least that’s how I pictured him as we spoke.

I started by reading Shapiro his resume. Unlike many very successful lawyers, who got that way by doing one thing very well, Shapiro’s career is marked by tremendous diversity: prosecutor; defense attorney; commercial litigator; international lawyer; celebrity/entertainment lawyer; entrepreneur – founder of LegalZoom and Shoedazzle (an internet fashion subscription service); and author – The Search For Justice (Simpson case; New York Times bestseller) and Misconception (fiction). He is also Chairman of the Brent Shapiro Foundation, a nonprofit organization created to raise drug and alcohol awareness, named for his son who died from chemical dependency disease in 2005. Shapiro has served as a legal analyst on all major networks, appeared in three movies (as himself), been recognized as a “Top 100 Trial Lawyer” by the National Trial Lawyers Association and is the recipient of the pro-bono lawyer of the year from the State of Nevada. Of course, for some in L.A., they would say that Shapiro’s greatest achievement is that he has lots of mentions on TMZ.com.

After reading this list to Shapiro I asked him, after all he’s done, how much longer did he plan to go at it? He gave me no sense whatsoever that he is going to stop anytime soon. He told me that he’s currently involved in major civil litigation and still doing some criminal work. I guess it’s not surprising that this is the case. Shapiro is 71, which isn’t as old as it used to be, and he lives in L.A., where even the nachos are organic. And he also seems to be in very good physical shape. His hobby is boxing and he is very serious about it. I found some video of him in the ring. This isn’t exactly playing on the firm’s softball team.

That Robert Shapiro isn’t slowing down was proven beyond a reasonable doubt when I asked him this. If a major celebrity were charged with murder, the trial was going to last for many months, be the subject of cable news every night and, quite simply, grip the nation’s attention, would be take the case as the defendant’s lawyer? “That’s a great question,” he said. I was expecting him to take all of a nanosecond to answer – No. Been there. Done that. Once was enough. But, instead, he paused, then broke the silence telling me that he would “consider it.” He said it depended on the person and the circumstances.

As a celebrity lawyer, Shapiro’s list of clients is seriously A-List: In addition to O.J. Simpson, some others are or have been Christian Brando, Darryl Strawberry, José Canseco, Vince Coleman, Johnny Carson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Linda Lovelace, the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan (briefly), Steve Wynn and Eva Longoria. Other high-profile clients include Golden Boy Boxing, Wynn Resorts and Rockstar Energy Drink.

I’m always curious if famous lawyers have it more difficult, because their opponents try harder to beat them, so they can hold up the win as a trophy. Shapiro didn’t think this was the case. Lawyers always want to win. But he did say that his success has made it easier to achieve favorable settlements in civil cases.

Misconception, Shapiro’s 2001 co-authored work of fiction, which I read in preparing for the interview, is excellent. It has an average of four stars out of five from (finicky) Amazon reviewers and several put the book in the couldn’t-put-it-down category. The book tells the story of a small-town Louisiana doctor, enjoying a perfect life, and who has now been nominated for Surgeon General of the United States. However, it all falls apart when a weekend of infidelity leads to a pregnancy, after which the doctor is then accused of murdering his own unborn child by slipping the mother the controversial abortion pill RU-486. Shapiro told me that the book was optioned for a movie but it couldn’t get made. The subject matter, the abortion debate, was simply too controversial for anyone to touch.

Speaking of works of fiction, Shapiro is not the only participant from the O.J. Simpson case to try his hand at that in the post-trial years. I put together this list of others: Marcia Clark (5 fiction books); Chris Darden (4); Alan Dershowitz (2); and even the Juice himself penned a (strange) fiction book. Is this just coincidence, was there something in the water in the L.A. criminal courts building or did the trial do something to its participants to force a need on them to express themselves in the form of storytelling? Shapiro didn’t see any cause and effect here – probably just people capitalizing on their name recognition to try to sell books.

The O.J. Simpson Case

One does not speak to Robert Shapiro without asking about The People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson. Despite all of Shapiro’s success – including before the Simpson case – O.J. is going to be mentioned in the first paragraph of his obituary. It is. And that’s not a bad thing. After all, Shapiro won a trial that looked impossible to win and he was at the helm of a case that will go down in legal history as one of the biggest of all time. Indeed, I believe that the Simpson case, despite making no law, can be talked about in the same sentence as Marbury v. Madison when it comes to its influence.

Since I strongly believe this, I asked Mr. Shapiro a simple question – what do you see as the impacts of the Simpson case? He gave me three.

First, it was the first time that the public got to see a real trial. Until then, trials were something that only existed on television shows. This brought home what a real drama, and its significance, looks like. Second, the case showed how different races can view the same evidence in such opposing ways. Third, the case demonstrated the value of forensic evidence – and the fact that it can be contaminated.

Shapiro is right about all of this. The Simpson trial really did show how the sausage is made. It was the first reality television show. Speaking of the case’s impact on race, the term “the N-word” became mainstream during the Simpson trial – used by the media to deal with Mark Furman’s testimony. Today we take forensic evidence and DNA for granted. But at the time of the Simpson case it was a curiosity.

And the list of impacts of the Simpson case goes on. The case will always be a part of the debate about cameras in the courtroom. The case demonstrated that cable news programming could be successfully accomplished by reporting on trials. Not to mention that it launched the careers of many on cable news.

Mark Geragos and Pat Harris say in their book, Mistrial, that the criminal justice system is becoming unfairly weighted toward the prosecution. The authors focus on three events in the 1980s and 90s that they say have caused this. The politicization of the justice system, i.e., political candidates cannot afford to be branded as soft on crime; the O.J. Simpson verdict serving as an “I told you so” moment – look, murderers are going free (the authors say that Simpson did it); and television commentators pandering to the O.J. crowd and ranting and raving that the court system is stacked against the victim and for the defense.

The Simpson case made celebrities of everyone involved. I’m pretty sure that if I stood at the corner of 17th and Market outside my office and showed people, of the right age, a picture of Judge Lance Ito and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, more people would recognize Ito – even after nearly 20 years. [Hey, when do the Summer Associates start?]

Lastly, the Simpson case brought us Jackie Chiles!

LegalZoom

Robert Shapiro is a co-founder of LegalZoom.com. You know exactly what they do. And you know exactly why you know -- the company’s long-running commercials where Shapiro tells you at the end that LegalZoom puts the law on your side. Shapiro told me that these days he is not involved in LegalZoom’s operations. In addition, his commercials are no longer used. It was decided that people got tired of seeing him.

I used LegalZoom as the basis to ask an obligatory insurance question. LegalZoom’s entire business is based on its position that it is not practicing law. Nonetheless, it is still doing things, of a legal nature, that potentially subject it to charges that it did something wrong, that caused a customer to suffer a financial loss. Because this business model is unique, I asked Shapiro if it was hard to place liability insurance for it. No, he told me. The company has been very careful to avoid any interpretation that it is in any way practicing law. That doesn’t mean that LegalZoom has not been accused of the unauthorized practice of law in some jurisdictions. But, Shapiro told me, the company has prevailed in all jurisdictions that have made such a charge.

Not that Robert Shapiro needed any more proof that, when you’re talking to me, you are not talking to Mike Wallace, this sealed the deal. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind saying his trademark LegalZoom tagline for me. He kindly obliged. And he didn’t mail it in either. No way. It was a serious effort. When he said to me “LegalZoom, we put the law on your side,” it had all of the inflections that you’ve heard on the commercials. It was fun, and kind of eerie actually, to hear this being the only listener. But what a good sport he was for indulging a little silliness on my part.

L.A. Traffic

Los Angeles is well-known for its interminable traffic. I asked Shapiro how he deals with this occupational hazard of the City of Angels. Most of the time he’s on the phone he told me. Blue tooth, he assured me, so he’s not breaking any laws. If not, it’s the Sinatra station on satellite radio or switching between CNN and Fox News.

[Shapiro is a Sinatra fan and represents Steve Wynn. As I was writing this I was reminded of that fantastic commercial from years ago for the Golden Nugget in Vegas where a very young Steve Wynn tells Sinatra that Wynn runs the place. Sinatra’s only reaction is to peel off a bill, place it in Wynn’s hand and say to him: “See that I get enough towels.” I know that this has nothing whatsoever to do with anything, but writing this made me think of it.]

The Oscar Pistorius Trial

I couldn’t let the call with Mr. Shapiro end without asking him about the Oscar Pistorius trial. The similarities between the Pistorius and Simpson cases are uncanny – both in their facts and gripping impact on their respective nations. Shapiro is confident that it is not going to end well for the Blade Runner. He told me that he has “no doubt” that Pistorius is going to be found guilty. Not to mention that he sees a conviction of homicide and not culpable homicide. [Culpable homicide, he explained to me, is South Africa’s equivalent to our manslaughter. But South African law is stringent about when you can use deadly force.]

Robert Shapiro is from a small town in central New Jersey and went on to conquer the legal profession in so many ways. As I was thanking him for his time, and we were exchanging final pleasantries, I summed up his career for him – “Not bad for a kid from Plainfield.” “No, not bad,” he said.