It's kind of tough to work in a profession that has a bad reputation. Nobody thinks "listicle writers" are bad people, but for some reason lawyers are stereotyped as being sleazy, unscrupulous jerks who chase ambulances and would do anything for a dollar. There are plenty of honest, upright lawyers out there who just want to make the world a better, fairer place. Oh, and then there are these 10 attorneys, who are just absolute bastards.
Julie Kronhaus![sleaziest lawyers of all time, julie kronhaus]()
Part of the job of a good attorney is to represent the weakest among us, and Florida lawyer
Julie Kronhaus built a reputation on that. Her career saw great rulings and settlements for her as she argued for numerous clients, including a nine-year-old girl disabled from birth. And then she took the money and spent it on herself. Kronhaus and her cardiologist husband lived a lavish lifestyle funded by embezzling from a bevy of trust funds she set up for her clients. When checks from Kronhaus started to bounce, her clients got suspicious and investigated. Finding that their money was all gone, they took her to court where she cheerfully told them it was all gone. Her husband claimed she'd defrauded him too and filed for divorce even as Kronhaus was disbarred.
Javier Armengau![sleaziest lawyers of all time, javier armengau]()
It's the job of a competent attorney to explore any possible avenue of getting the verdict they want, but Ohio lawyer
Javier Armengau took that a little too far. When one of his clients looked like he was about to be found guilty, Armengau took the man's mother into a conference room and tried to pressure her into having sex with the judge to soften the blow. When she refused, the lawyer forced himself on her anyways. She was one of many female clients that the horny defense attorney sexually assaulted during his career, and in 2014 he was convicted on nine counts of rape, kidnapping, sexual battery and other sleazy stuff.
Paul Hansmeier![sleaziest lawyers of all time, paul hansmeier]()
Copyright trolls are some of the most reviled sleazy lawyers -- people who file frivolous lawsuits to extort money from similar-sounding intellectual property owners. One of the worst was
Paul Hansmeier, who was one of the principals of California-based Prenda Law. Prenda's modus operandi was to threaten random people with $150,000 judgments by claiming they'd illegally downloaded internet pornography. If they didn't immediately settle for a smaller amount -- often around $4,000 -- the "lawsuit" would be made public and the whole world would know. Prenda's "clients" in these suits were actually shell companies set up by Hansmeier and the other principals, and the downloaded porn often didn't even exist. That didn't stop them from collecting millions of dollars from terrified plaintiffs until the court caught on and fined them a massive penalty.
John Milton Merritt![sleaziest lawyers of all time, john milton merritt]()
When a horrific accident happens, lawyers sue the responsible parties because society demands punishment. The financial loss is designed to spur the guilty into cleaning up their acts. So when a 2002 car crash left a quartet of girls orphaned,
John Milton Merritt stepped in to sue the manufacturers of the car and the tires. The case was won for a multi-million dollar payout, which was put in a trust for the minor children. Merritt then proceeded to drain the girls' trust fund and spend the money on his law firm. When the family realized what was happening, they pulled him into court, where he confessed to the whole scam and then died before he could be sentenced.
Marc Bernstein![sleaziest lawyers of all time, marc bernstein]()
The life of a lawyer is a tightrope -- you need to maintain the appearance of success to get clients, and any visible weakness can lead to a swift end to your career. That's gotta be the reason that New York lawyer
Marc Bernstein spent a whopping $2.2 million to pay off a blackmailer from 2006 to 2009. That wasn't his own money, though -- he embezzled it from a laundry list of clients, including stealing $86,000 from an elderly Brooklyn woman who slipped and hit her head in a nursing home. He was disbarred, sentenced to seven years in prison, and ordered to pay back $200,000 to his victims.
Michael Fine![sleaziest lawyers of all time, michael fine]()
The lawyer-client relationship is, by definition, a fairly intimate one. You have to trust your attorney with all of your secrets if you want the best results. But Ohio attorney
Michael Fine took things a little far when he brought hypnosis into the mix. Fine was stripped of his license in 2015 because multiple clients came forward talking about "missing time" during meetings with him and coming out with their bras off. When cops didn't believe them, one client went in wearing a wire and recorded Fine in the process. It all turned out to be true, amazingly, and after Fine lost his license he was slapped with rape charges as well.
Paul Bergrin![sleaziest lawyers of all time, paul bergrin]()
The thing about being a defense attorney is that by the nature of your job you rub shoulders with some pretty lousy people.
Paul Bergrin was so impressed by the cash his clients made pimping and moving drugs around that he decided to get into the business himself. Bergrin was a powerful litigator, but what really won him cases was witnesses either disappearing or changing their stories before they took the stand. That's because he regularly hired hit men to take them out, including the murder of an undercover FBI informant. When the authorities closed in on him, there were plenty of people ready to rat him out and he got six life sentences with no possibility of parole.
Ed Fagan![sleaziest lawyers of all time, ed fagan]()
The most amazing thing about many of the lawyers on this list is that they take actions that should be moral grand slams -- like helping compensate the families of Holocaust survivors -- and turn them into sleazy nightmares.
Ed Fagan was a New Jersey attorney who pursued Swiss banks to force them to release money due to victims of the Nazi regime. That's all well and good, but once he got that money Fagan appropriated it for his own purposes. He claimed that the money he took from trusts was "owed him" by his clients, but could produce no evidence that they did. By 2005 he had more than $4 million in liens against him and the Bar Association stripped him of the right to practice in New York a few years later.
R. Mark Keaton![sleaziest lawyers of all time, r mark keaton]()
Many of these sleazy lawyer stories involve significant sums of money, but others are just pure gross behavior. Meet Indiana attorney
R. Mark Keaton, who was 41 and married when he started an affair with a college sophomore...who was also his daughter's roommate. That's one of the grossest things we've ever heard, but it just gets worse. In addition to constantly calling and texting his young paramour, Keaton posted nude pictures of her on "revenge porn" sites...and had the balls to borrow $8,000 from her to boot. He harassed the girl for seven years after she finally dumped him, and eventually the courts got involved and Keaton was disbarred.
Joseph Caramadre![sleaziest lawyers of all time, joseph caramadre]()
Lawyers often find clients in moments of weakness, but
Joseph Caramadre's practice took that a little far. The Rhode Island attorney specialized in going to people on their deathbeds and offering them $2000 for their signatures. He would then set up annuities in their name that paid out death benefits -- to Caramadre and his business partners, not the actual dead people. It was a loophole in the law that you'd have to be a true ghoul to exploit, but this guy did to the tune of $46 million dollars. None of that was shared with the families of course. He was sentenced to six years in prison for his sleazy deeds.
