From the Producer of the epic series The Civil War, Jazz, and Baseball…
Narrated by Sam Waterston
“Kings of the Courtroom”- The Story of America’s Greatest Trial Lawyers will be heralded as the definitive work, exploring the last century of American trial law through the eyes of its brightest stars. This is a Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball, and The National Parks) anthology, formatted as an episodic miniseries that features biographical segments on the legendary attorneys and their highest profile cases. Clarence Darrow, Melvin Belli, Thurgood Marshall, Johnnie Cochran & Gerry Spence cover the entire century, from the early 1900’s to the current era. They are all brilliant legal minds that championed some of the most important causes in American History. Simply put, they changed our country.
From Darrow’s Scopes Trial, where the first celebrity trial lawyers were placed in the American spotlight, to the media circus surrounding Cochran’s OJ Simpson Trial, these attorneys have altered the way we think about the justice system. This series will document the massive contribution that these men have made to the legal profession… and to the lives of their clients. The modern trial lawyer’s impact on society will finally be properly measured in the most entertaining way possible.
We are in negotiation with Sam Waterston to narrate, and many well-known celebrities will be featured with colorful commentary, throughout the series. This will be the quintessential documentary series on the American trial lawyer and the volatile cases that have shaped the legal world.
