What a celebrity criminal defense attorney can teach you about failure, exercise, and Israel.
Ben Brafman is a legendary criminal defense attorney who has defended high-profile clients like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “Puff Daddy”…
What a celebrity criminal defense attorney can teach you about failure, exercise, and Israel.
Ben Brafman is a legendary criminal defense attorney who has defended high-profile clients like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “Puff Daddy”, Jay-Z, NFL star Plaxico Burress, numerous political pundits, and even the Italian mafia. On a recent afternoon, I sat down with him in his tony, Manhattan office. Photos of him with celebrities, moguls, and politicians of all stripes lined the walls. A framed copy of the New York magazine edition labeling him the “Best Criminal Defense Lawyer in New York” huddled humbly in midst of awards from the State Bar Association and a host of national and international law institutions. Success was literally written on the walls.
Brafman is a legal legend, respected by his friends and foes alike. In many ways, he’s the iconic prototype of a successful Jewish lawyer. Throughout the afternoon I spent with Mr. Brafman, he shared with me his stories and values. Here are three (random) questions I threw at him about failure, his personal gym regimen, and his thoughts on groups that boycott Israel.
RLW: “Mr. Brafman, what is your advice on how to handle failure?”
BB: “Failure is part of growing up. You learn from it. Try and analyze what caused it. Then, do your best to be better. Watch out for the trap of becoming dejected, moaning and looking for sympathy. As a criminal defense attorney, winning is hard. Winning is a combination of factors. What are the facts? Who are your adversaries? Who is the decision maker? I meet a lot of lawyers who talk a good game but are lacking substance. Being able to talk a good game doesn’t impress me. Also, remember that things change. Lots of people don’t want to support my work because they think the people who are being charged with these high-level crimes don’t deserve a defense. Until one day it’s those people who are calling me to help them with their loved ones. Then, I’m a “malach” [“Angel of Rescue”].
RLW: “I was told that you work out in the morning for 45 minutes. Apparently, your regimen includes a personal trainer and lots of work at the punching bag. Do you still do that?”
BB: “Yes, I have a trainer who comes four days a week, at 6:30am. It’s like having a “chavrusa” [“Torah study partner”]. I’m not naturally a morning person but, then again, I can’t just leave him standing there at the doorbell. It forces me to stick to my schedule. And yes, I do like the punching bag. It helps get a lot of aggression out of my system in a way that I don’t get arrested [At this point, Brafman laughed]. I find that exercising in the morning not only helps me cope with stress but also helps me think more clearly for the rest of the day.
The most important time of my day is spending time with my beloved Lynda. We’ve been married almost 50 years and she’s been my partner on this journey all the way through. Part of how I keep my balance in life is by being married to an authentically good person who understands the pressures of my job. You just can’t be married to me without having a good sense of humor. I’ll never forget how one day I showed up at work and there was a six foot tall mannequin of a police officer stationed in my office. My secretary told me it was from my wife. When I called her, she laughed and said, “I think you need an extra “Shomer” [protector ].
RLW: “Changing gears, I know you are very pro-Israel and feel someone should speak up against the haters of the Jewish state. You’ve done that a lot in recent years. What’s your favorite argument against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement?”
BB: “A movement becomes dangerous when it generates the kind of hatred that keeps anyone, a country or an individual, from getting a fair trial. When you start cross-examining the proponents of the BDS movement, they quickly become a puddle of water on the witness stand. I think it’s an intellectually dishonest movement, predicated on raw antisemitism.
They’ve taken 1 and 1 and come up with 5. If the Palestenians are deprived of something, they automatically blame Israel. I don’t hear them blaming any of the Arab communities around Israel. No, they expect a handout only from the Jewish state, the only democracy in the entire Middle East. When I see Israel being attacked as an apartheid state, it makes me want to throw up. Israel has the greatest record of equality in the workforce, particularly between men and women, than any country in that region, and possibly any country in the world.
Look, I’ve been trained as a litigator to undermine arguments that are not supported by evidence. So I’m very troubled when I see college students on campuses around the world attacking Israel without delving into the facts of the case. These kids aren’t stupid and yet they attack the only country in the Middle East which has progressive civil rights, where women aren’t treated as second-class citizens, and where members of the LGBT community are accepted. Just mere miles away from Israel, they’re throwing gay people off of rooftops!
Yet, when Israel is attacked by their terrorist neighbors, the international community is an uproar and demands that Israel not use “disproportionate force.” Then the media does a body count and frames Israel as the “bad guy” because they lost less people in the conflict. When the United States bombed Iraq, our mantra was “shock and awe.” Nobody used a body count. Only Israel is targeted in this way.”