250 Years of American Legal History

Best-Known Lawyers in the United States

From the Founding Fathers who drafted the Constitution to the Supreme Court advocates and trial attorneys who shape the law today — the 20 most recognized lawyers in U.S. history, organized by era and signature contribution.

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A Quarter-Millennium of American Legal Influence

The United States has been shaped by its lawyers from the very beginning. Of the fifty-five delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, thirty-five had legal training. Twenty-seven U.S. presidents earned law degrees. And outside of the political arena, generations of trial lawyers, Supreme Court advocates, and civil rights attorneys have argued the cases that defined how Americans live, work, marry, vote, and stand before the courts.

This page profiles twenty of the best-known lawyers in U.S. history, organized into four eras: the Founding era, the Civil War and Reconstruction era, the twentieth century, and the modern era. Each profile sticks to documented public-record facts — the cases they argued, the courts they served on, the books they wrote. The full list is not exhaustive; it’s a representative cross-section of the attorneys most often cited in legal scholarship, classroom syllabi, and major media coverage. For modern attorneys reading this, every name below shares one thing in common: they built their reputations on being available, prepared, and responsive when clients needed them — the same principles a 24/7 attorney answering service exists to support today.

1. John Adams (1735–1826)

Adams studied law in Massachusetts and is best remembered legally for his defense of the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre trial of 1770, an unpopular case he took on principle. He went on to serve as the second president of the United States and was a key drafter of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

2. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

Jefferson studied law at the College of William & Mary and was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence at age thirty-three. He served as the third president of the United States, founded the University of Virginia, and was instrumental in shaping early American jurisprudence as a writer and statesman.

3. Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804)

Hamilton practiced law in New York after the Revolution and was a co-author of the Federalist Papers, the foundational defense of the U.S. Constitution. He served as the first Secretary of the Treasury, designed the federal financial system, and tried numerous cases before the New York courts before his death in a duel with Aaron Burr.

4. John Marshall (1755–1835)

Marshall served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, the longest tenure in that role. His opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) established the principle of judicial review — the foundation of the Supreme Court’s authority to strike down unconstitutional laws — and remains one of the most cited cases in U.S. legal history.

5. Francis Scott Key (1779–1843)

Key was admitted to the bar in 1801 and built a successful legal practice in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. While he is most widely known for writing the poem that became “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the War of 1812, he also served as the U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1833 to 1841.

6. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

Lincoln was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836 after self-study, then practiced law for roughly twenty-five years before being elected the sixteenth president. He argued one case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which he lost. His best-known trial as an attorney is People v. Armstrong (1858), in which he used an almanac to challenge a key witness’s testimony about moonlight at the time of the alleged crime.

7. Belva Lockwood (1830–1917)

Lockwood was the first woman admitted to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (in 1879, after she successfully lobbied Congress to pass legislation allowing women to do so). She also became the first woman to receive electoral votes for U.S. President, running as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1884 and 1888.

8. Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)

Darrow was a defense attorney whose career spanned five decades and several of the most publicized trials of the early twentieth century. He defended Eugene Debs in the 1894 Pullman Strike case, Leopold and Loeb in their 1924 murder trial (where his closing argument is credited with sparing them from execution), and John Scopes in the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools.

9. Louis Brandeis (1856–1941)

Brandeis was the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, serving from 1916 to 1939. Before joining the Court, he developed what became known as the “Brandeis Brief,” a legal argument that drew heavily on social science and empirical data — an approach that transformed how American courts evaluate factual claims in constitutional cases.

10. Charles Hamilton Houston (1895–1950)

Houston served as dean of Howard University School of Law and as special counsel for the NAACP, where he designed the long-term legal strategy that dismantled racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. Often called “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow,” he mentored Thurgood Marshall and laid the constitutional groundwork that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education.

11. Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993)

Marshall argued thirty-two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court as lead counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, winning twenty-nine. His best-known victory is Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. He was appointed the first African-American Justice of the Supreme Court in 1967 and served until 1991.

12. Melvin Belli (1907–1996)

Belli, often called the “King of Torts,” is widely credited with reshaping American personal injury law through innovative use of demonstrative evidence and expert testimony. His best-known case is the defense of Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. He also represented Errol Flynn, Mae West, and the Rolling Stones in litigation following the 1969 Altamont concert.

13. William Kunstler (1919–1995)

Kunstler was a civil rights and civil liberties attorney best known for defending the Chicago Seven in their 1969–70 trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He also represented inmates after the 1971 Attica Prison uprising, members of the American Indian Movement after the 1973 Wounded Knee incident, and defendants in numerous Vietnam-era protest cases.

14. F. Lee Bailey (1933–2021)

Bailey rose to prominence with his successful 1966 appeal in Sheppard v. Maxwell, which freed Dr. Sam Sheppard after a Supreme Court ruling that prejudicial pretrial publicity had denied him a fair trial. He went on to represent Albert DeSalvo (the “Boston Strangler”), Patty Hearst, and O.J. Simpson as part of the 1995 defense team.

15. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020)

Before her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993, Ginsburg co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU and argued six gender-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, winning five. As an Associate Justice from 1993 until her death in 2020, she authored the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia (1996), which ended the male-only admission policy at the Virginia Military Institute.

16. Sandra Day O’Connor (1930–2023)

O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Reagan in 1981 and serving until her retirement in 2006. She is widely regarded as a pivotal swing vote during her tenure and authored or joined a number of decisions on abortion, affirmative action, and federalism that defined late-twentieth-century constitutional law.

17. Joe Jamail (1925–2015)

Jamail was a Houston-based trial lawyer best known for representing Pennzoil in its lawsuit against Texaco over the contested acquisition of Getty Oil. The 1985 verdict of $10.53 billion (later reduced in settlement) remains one of the largest civil judgments in U.S. history. He was for decades reported as the wealthiest practicing attorney in the United States.

18. Johnnie Cochran (1937–2005)

Cochran was a Los Angeles trial lawyer best known as the lead defense attorney for O.J. Simpson during Simpson’s 1995 murder trial. His earlier career included representing clients in civil rights and police-misconduct cases in Southern California, work that established his reputation before the Simpson trial brought him national prominence.

19. John G. Roberts Jr. (b. 1955)

Roberts has served as the seventeenth Chief Justice of the United States since 2005. Before joining the Court, he argued thirty-nine cases before the Supreme Court as a private attorney and Deputy Solicitor General, a record few advocates of his generation match. He clerked for then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist before practicing appellate law at Hogan & Hartson.

20. Sonia Sotomayor (b. 1954)

Sotomayor has served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2009, when President Obama appointed her as the first Hispanic and first Latina Justice in the Court’s history. Before her appointment she served as a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York and as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

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