About Steve Knopper
Steve Knopper is a Billboard editor at large, former Rolling Stone contributing editor, contributor to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ and many other publications, and the author of two books: Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age and MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson. A longtime Super Lawyers contributor, he has written numerous oral histories, including one about civil rights attorneys in Alabama in the 1950s and ’60s, and another on the pioneering wave of women attorneys in Southern California in the 1970s. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
Articles written by Steve Knopper
The Beasley Legacy
Everyone who worked with legendary Philadelphia trial lawyer Jim Beasley has a story or two to tell. Some of the attorneys who knew him best shared their memories with usJames E. Beasley Sr. didn’t seem like the kind of kid who’d grow up to be a fire-breathing legal showman, someone who seduced skeptical juries while steamrolling over defense attorneys and judges. He was a high school dropout in West Philadelphia, then drove trucks, buses and cabs after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. But after graduating from Temple University School of Law, he opened a Philadelphia shop where, over the next few decades, he’d try more than 400 …
Operation Greylord: Fixing the System
An oral history of the investigation that took down a corrupt Cook County court systemAs it turns out, even in Chicago a judge cannot make financial arrangements with a defense attorney to fix a case. Such bald-faced bribery happened over and over in the Cook County court system in the early ‘80s, which led a group of U.S. attorneys and FBI agents to begin a long, nuanced investigation they called Operation Greylord. Playing out like scenes from The Wire, Greylord had everything—moles and recording devices, heroes and bagmen, Russian roulette and courtroom drama. By the end, …
Too Big to Not Fail
An oral history of the short life and quick death of Dewey & LeBoeuf“You have to be bigger,” Steven H. Davis said. In 2007, after orchestrating the merger of New York law firms Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, Davis and the new firm management predicted that the newly christened Dewey & LeBoeuf, with a combined 1,400 employees, would make $1 billion in annual revenue and lead the growing trend of globally sophisticated super-firms. Bad timing. Davis, chairman of the merged firm, didn’t account for the U.S. economic collapse …
After Columbine
An oral history of the legal issues surrounding the Littleton tragedyWithin hours of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s shooting spree in Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, local attorneys’ phones began to ring. Like everyone else, they were dumbstruck by the news that the heavily armed teenagers shot and killed 12 students and a teacher, then themselves. With national media invading their firms and counselors showing up from other states to publicly threaten lawsuits, these attorneys had to remain stoic and professional at all times. It wasn’t easy. …
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