Media Profiles
Mr. Lefcourt has been profiled repeatedly in the media. Below is a selection.
2014 FCJ Kerry Kennedy Address
In a speech delivered by human rights activist Kerry Kennedy at the Foundation for Criminal Justices gala in August 2014, she talks about Mr. Lefcourt’s outstanding representation of her and the key role his advocacy played in her acquittal on criminal charges in Westchester County.
“The Ninth Member of the Chicago Eight,” New York Super Lawyers (2006):
“Defense attorneys are not advocates for crime. They are as interested as anybody in a safe environment in which to live and raise their families. But they are, or should be, overwhelmingly interested in making sure that the government deprives no one of liberty without doing so consistent with the law. Otherwise, the government is just another thug interfering with a citizen’s freedom.”
“A Witness to the Revolution Recalls Abbie,” New York Times (August 2000):
“He is charming, funny, a good storyteller: characteristics that juries find endearing . Mr. Lefcourt can drop celebrity client names as adroitly as the next high-profile lawyer, still walks the walk, after a fashion. In the last two decades, as he acquired paying clients, he was also a president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and testified in Washington about many noble, and usually losing, causes.”
“Best Lawyers in New York,” New York Magazine (May 1995):
“Lefcourt has styled himself as a rebel lawyer who takes on the system and doesn’t worry about stepping on a few toes in the name of principle. His level of commitment is widely admired. ‘It’s one thing to be interested in the case,’ says one attorney. ‘It’s a second thing to be concerned with a sense of injustice in the way in which the process works, and Jerry has that to a very high degree.'”
“An Interview with Heeney Award Winner Gerald B. Lefcourt,” The Champion (May 1994):
“Obviously, I am not still standing on tables shaking my fists. I am not picketing the White House. Yesterday, I was fighting government overreaching. Today, I think in many cases I am still fighting government overreaching. Many of my cases overtly impact on the Bill of Rights and our notions of due process. The IRS Form 8300 litigation that I am working on for NACDL directly concerns whether the government can put its nose in between lawyer and client. I have also been very active in the area of property forfeiture, which I think is an outrageous practice, fraught with violations of fundamental rights. So yes, the clientele has changed, no question, but the interesting and important issues are there.”
“Defense of Mel Miller: One in a Life of Battles for Scrappy Lefcourt,” New York Law Journal (December 1990):
“Mr. Lefcourt has a healthy sense of disrespect for authority. . . He brings the same enormous passion – a belief in the correctness of his positions – to his white-collar cases as he did to the political causes. He [is] just the one other lawyers would turn to when they know they are headed for a courtroom confrontations: he will take the offensive with a refined sense of outrage over government overreaching; and, lacking “old boy” ties to any U.S. Attorney’s office, he is unlikely to cut a deal behind his co-defendants’ backs.”
