Dream Team

The "Dream Team" refers to the team of trial lawyers that represented O. J. Simpson in his 1995 trial for the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. The team included Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Carl Douglas, Shawn Chapman Holley, Gerald Uelmen, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Robert Blasier, and William Thompson. The "Dream Team" lawyers Robert Shapiro Robert Shapiro joined Simpson's defense team one week after the beginning of the trial, when Howard Weitzman withdrew from the case, stating his workload was too heavy to continue as chair. As defense chair, Shapiro was called the "architect" of the Simpson defense for building the high-profile legal team that would later be dubbed the "Dream Team". Shapiro led the defense team through much of the trial before Johnnie Cochran took over as the lead chair. Shapiro is the co-founder of RightCounsel.com and is a senior partner in the Los Angeles-based law firm Glaser Weil Fink Jacobs Howard Avchen & Shapiro, LLP. He also co-founded LegalZoom. Johnnie Cochran Cochran joined the Simpson defense team and later took over as its chair, during the trial. In his closing arguments, Cochran famously uttered the phrase, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," referencing the prosecution's scenario not making sense in general, but also alluding to the fact that the glove the prosecutors alleged Simpson wore during the murder did not fit Simpson's hand. Cochran was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2003 and subsequently died in his home in Los Angeles, on March 29, 2005.