IN AUGUST 2008, WHILE EPSTEIN was still in “jail,” my clients exercised their right to reject the civil settlement structure proposed by the NPA, which allowed me to file separate civil lawsuits against him on behalf of Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa. From the very beginning of the civil cases, Epstein’s lawyers fought us on everything.
Epstein was represented by Marty Weinberg, Roy Black, Guy Lewis, Michael Tien, Lilly Ann Sanchez, Jack Goldberger, Ken Starr, Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Alan Dershowitz, and locally by Bob Critton. This was a multimillion-dollar dream team of lawyers whose main defense strategy was to paper the cases to death. His lawyers filed objections to everything. They filed motions on every issue, and on every nonissue. I was quickly drowning in paperwork.
There came a point when Epstein’s growing team of attorneys was forcing me to go to court in Palm Beach, an hour from my office, multiple times a week. The other days of the week, I was up there meeting with my clients, who were being followed by private investigators and called by old friends, acquaintances, teachers, and neighbors who had been interrogated by Epstein’s investigators. His full-court press was taking a toll.
Courtney was working at a bagel shop when Epstein’s investigators came in and demanded that she speak with them. They told her flat out that she should not prosecute any civil case against him. Needless to say, that left Courtney scared. Another time, she was stopped at the gas station by one of Epstein’s people and boxed in while vague threats were made toward her about what would happen if she continued to pursue her civil claims against him. The best goons money could buy were out in force doing Epstein’s bidding.
Paul Cassell and I were fighting against some of the highest-paid lawyers in the country. Paul didn’t have any staff and I only had one paralegal and a law clerk. As for the lawyers on Epstein’s payroll, they were supported by large law firms employing hundreds of other staff members and associates.
Regardless, we worked long hours to hold our own. Unfortunately, my non-Epstein cases were falling behind. Far behind. The Epstein cases were consuming so much time that it was impossible to do other work. I considered my options, of course. Some fine firms in town had tried to recruit me over the years, and if ever there was a time for that, it was now. But I wanted to do it on my own terms.
By the time I’d opened my own office in 2007, I had a wife, a one-year-old son, no income, and bills that didn’t put themselves on hold while I tried to establish a law practice. Those days were rewarding, though. Cases would come in through friends at the police department, the state attorney’s office, and social workers who were in touch with victims who had been shot, stabbed, or, in some cases, sexually assaulted. I represented these clients primarily against corporate entities who failed to implement appropriate levels of security, thereby providing opportunity for criminals to hurt my clients.
This niche was unique. Consequently, I was bringing in a lot of cases. More than I could handle; especially while working on this Epstein mess.
During the spring of 2009, I was at the gym—where I went from five to six o’clock every morning—when I was approached by a lawyer I had litigated against named Russell Adler. He had a reputation for representing sexual abuse victims. Russell was running the trial division at a fast-growing Fort Lauderdale law firm called Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler (RRA).
Russell had recently won a $20 million case against a sexual predator, which naturally led to our conversation about the Jeffrey Epstein case and how much of my time it was consuming. I told him that the rest of my practice was starting to suffer. He wanted me to sit down with Scott Rothstein, the managing partner of his firm, to talk about what RRA could do for me to support my other cases while I continued to fight Epstein. There were more than fifty lawyers at RRA, many of whom were former judges, and on top of that, only the best lawyers around town were being recruited by that firm, or at least that was the impression he gave me.
Russell set up a meeting for me with Scott Rothstein in a steak house called Bova Prime located on the bottom floor of the huge skyscraper building in Fort Lauderdale where RRA maintained four floors of office space. The restaurant was owned by Rothstein himself. I wasn’t given much information about Scott or RRA before the meeting, only what Russell told me, which was that Scott had been one of the best young trial attorneys in the area of employment law before parlaying those wins into multiple lucrative business ventures. Scott owned properties throughout Fort Lauderdale, both residential and commercial, including the famous Versace Mansion in Miami. He was even part owner of a vodka brand.
I arrived at Bova Prime and told the hostess that I was there to see Scott Rothstein. She took me upstairs to the second floor, where no one was apparently permitted to go except for Scott. She sat me at a large round table overlooking the entire restaurant. I had never seen Scott before and had no idea what to expect. I figured that since he was a lawyer running one of the most powerful law firms in Fort Lauderdale, he would be an older guy with white hair and glasses, dressed traditionally in a business suit. I knew from his reputation that just about the entire city was completely enamored of him.
I heard a loud male voice and peered over the railing into the main dining area. From my angle I couldn’t get a good look, but from the sound of it, the man seemed to be greeting everyone like he was the mayor. I heard multiple people yelling out, “Scottyyyy,” and then the sound of high fives. “I have an important meeting. Gotta go, love ya,” the man yelled before walking up to the VIP area where I was sitting. He looked nothing like what I’d expected. He was in his forties, with spiky brown hair, wearing a bright purple suit and a massive watch covered in diamonds.
I didn’t know what he knew about me or what Russell had told him. He sat down in front of me and cocked his head to the left. I thought that he was doing it intentionally in an inquisitive way, but this was actually the result of a peculiar tic. One of his eyes would also blink at the same time his head would twitch.
While I was prepared to answer all of his questions, the interview lasted barely two minutes. The only thing he asked me was what I expected my role at the firm to be.
Before Scott gave me the chance to answer, he proclaimed, “Russell says you’re great. You’d better be. You’re hired.” He said not to worry about the salary because his law firm operated on the “system of fairness” and that if I made him money, he would treat me fairly. He quickly countered that with the statement that if I disappointed him, I’d have to see things his way and accept reduced pay. Sounded fair to me.
Before I could finish the conversation, he yelled over to the waitress to get him a martini, which she did. For a second, I thought that he was going to drink it right there, but then he got up, walked downstairs, and handed it to someone else, presumably to make them feel important. Scott was a master at making everyone around him feel important, and yet at the same time, everyone knew that no one was more important than Scott.
I called Russ and told him I was joining the firm, then took my paralegal, Shawn, to lunch at this little place called Mama Mia near our office in Hollywood. I told her we were going to join RRA. She was skeptical but agreed to come along. She believed in me. Prior to meeting me, she had worked for a big firm for twenty years. Even though she didn’t want to go back to a place like that, she said she’d do it for me. And I certainly didn’t want to go without her. I told her we had already been hired at RRA and that her meeting with the hiring staff there was merely a formality that she would have to go through before the first day of work.
That weekend, we loaded up more than sixty boxes of files and drove back and forth between our old office in Hollywood and our new office in downtown Fort Lauderdale. On Monday morning, we walked into the offices on the twelfth floor of RRA together. I remember noticing right from the beginning that everyone we saw seemed happy. It was a relaxed environment, with people talking in the hallways and sharing ideas. It reminded me a lot of the camaraderie I’d been a part of at the state attorney’s office. To me, this was refreshing.
Shawn went in for her “interview” with Scott’s assistant, Debra. I am sure Shawn asked more questions of Debra than Debra asked of Shawn. The truth was, Debra knew nothing about being a paralegal, and Shawn knew everything. By this point in her career, Shawn had even published a book about how to be a paralegal that was being used to teach students in law schools.
I expected Shawn to be as excited as I was when she came to my office after the interview. She shut the door and said, “I am so sorry, I told you I would go anywhere with you, but I will not stay here. It just doesn’t feel right. But call me when you leave, because you will, and I will come back and work for you.” She packed up her stuff right then and there and left the office without working one second at RRA.
I didn’t really have any time to think about losing Shawn. There was too much work to do and I needed to quickly get acclimated to this new law firm so that I could finally take advantage of all of its resources. I immediately told Russell that I wanted to put a team together to go after Jeffrey Epstein.
Russell followed through. Right after I started, I held a meeting in the main conference room where ten other lawyers and two investigators attended to listen to the factual and procedural history of the Epstein civil cases. I then laid out my plan of attack for putting us in the best position to win.
At this point, I had not yet seen Scott Rothstein in the office. He was talked about by everyone, not only in the office but all over town, as this larger-than-life super lawyer whom all of the richest people wanted to latch on to. He was rumored to travel only by private plane or helicopter, with a hand in every growing business, all while also running the most powerful law firm in town.
Later that week, though, Scott convened a firm-wide meeting in the large banquet room on the first floor of the building. More than one hundred lawyers and employees piled in and waited for him to arrive. Everyone was talking among themselves when all of a sudden, straight out of a movie, both doors swung open, slammed against the wall, and he entered like an NFL linebacker at the Super Bowl. There was no introduction, no pleasantries; he just started yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Every law firm,” he said, “practices law the same way. One firm files a motion, another firm files a motion. Someone files a complaint, another firm files an answer. That is not how we practice at RRA. When someone files a motion, I want you to chop their motherf***ing heads off. We are going to take over this town. We are going to change the way people practice law. I want everyone to be entrepreneurial. Anyone who comes to me with ideas about how to take over this place is going to be rewarded. Now everyone go and tear heads off.”
He slammed his hand down on the table before skipping out of the room. As barbaric as it sounds, on some level I left feeling excited to work for this guy. The scene reminded me of my high school football locker room. Clownish as he may have been, Scott knew how to perform, organize, and most of all motivate.
Scott’s energy was off the charts. With the resources of RRA, I was inspired to assemble an unbeatable team to do as Scott had just ordered—take off Epstein’s head.