Paul Callan (attorney)

Paul Callan (born May 15, 1950) is an American attorney who is an expert in trial Law and litigation. He has tried a variety of cases throughout the United States involving constitutional, criminal, products liability, and entertainment law matters. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, as well as the Courts of the States of New York and New Jersey. He is also a well known television legal commentator.

Personal

Paul Callan graduated from Shrewsbury High School in Shrewsbury,Massachusettsin 1968. He earned his undergraduate degree at Seton Hall University in 1972 and his Juris Doctorate from Boston College Law School in 1975. While attending Seton Hall University, he was one of two students selected to represent the United States in debate competition in Europe. As a member of the United States Debate Team, he debated at the Oxford Union.

Television Career

Mr. Callan has served as legal commentator for a variety of networks, including NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Fox News Channel, and Court TV He has also provided legal commentary in a number of newspapers, including The New York Times, The New York Post, and The New York Daily News. He has provided commentary on a variety of radio stations throughout the United States, including WCBS and WNYC. He is a frequent guest on both talk radio and talk television shows, including Hannity & Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, and Rivera Live, Larry King Live and Inside Edition.

Legal Career

After attending Boston College Law School, Mr. Callan was recruited by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office where he served as an assistant district attorney from 1975 to 1980. He ultimately served as deputy chief, of the homicide bureau of that office and had primary supervisory responsibility over homicide prosecutions in one of the largest criminal jurisdictions in the United States. While serving as an assistant district attorney, Mr. Callan was involved in a number of high profile prosecutions, including the prosecution of David Berkowitz (a/k/a The Son of Sam).

After leaving the District Attorney's Office, Mr. Callan was a founding partner of Callan, Koster, Brady & Brennan, LLP., a well known New York City litigation law firm. In his capacity as a senior partner in that firm, Mr. Callan has been involved in a number of high profile cases including his representation of the Estate of Nicole Brown Simpson in the O.J. Simpson criminal case. A civil jury in Santa Monica, California returned a verdict of 33.5 million dollars against O.J. Simpson at the conclusion of that trial. Mr. Callan has also represented a number of other of well known individuals including Leonardo DiCaprio, Quentin Tarantino, Ivana Trump, the actress Michelle Rodriguez and Hollywood director, Vadim Perelman.

Through the years he has litigated a wide variety of matters, including constitutional cases, criminal cases, class action litigation, products liability litigation, as well as professional liability, medical malpractice and commercial litigation. One of his more famous cases involved his representation of a wrongly accused New York City physician, Patrick Griffin, who was acquitted while being represented by Mr. Callan of charges that he sexually abused a patient. The case was analyzed by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal [The Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2000 ] in a Pulitzer Prize winning column [http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2001/commentary/works/052400.html] .

Mr. Callan also served as a councilman and the deputy mayor of the village of Ridgewood, New Jersey. He is an adjunct professor of Media Law at Seton Hall University.

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