Carl E. Douglas

Carl E. Douglas is the former Managing Attorney at the Law Offices of Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr, best known for his work as the Coordinator of O.J. Simpson’s criminal defense team. His work as a member of O.J. Simpson’s criminal defense “Dream Team” was prominently featured in ESPN’s 30 for 30, Academy Award-winning documentary, O.J.: Made In America.

While at The Cochran Firm, Mr. Douglas tried dozens of cases to verdict, in a wide array of personal injury, civil rights, and criminal law matters. After going out on his own in 1996, he broadened his list of accomplishments. Mr. Douglas was the attorney for the lead plaintiff in Patricia Anderson v. General Motors Corporation, a product liability trial where the jury returned a $4.9 billion dollar verdict, which was then the largest personal injury verdict ever awarded in United States. As lead counsel in a seven-week trial against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, concerning the police death of an unarmed African-American man, Mr. Douglas helped the victim’s family obtain a verdict of $8,000,000.00.

In 1994 and again in 1999, Mr. Douglas was honored as the “Loren Miller Lawyer of the Year” by the John M. Langston Bar Association. He became the second attorney in the more than 85-year history of that Association, to be awarded that coveted honor more than once. In 2006, the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles, the largest local association of plaintiffs’ attorneys in the United States, named Mr. Douglas its Trial Lawyer of the Year.

Prior to joining Mr. Cochran’s office, Mr. Douglas was employed from 1981 through 1987 as a trial attorney at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Los Angeles, where he represented indigent defendants charged with various federal crimes including bank robbery, drug possession, and white-collar fraud. He began his legal career in 1980 working at the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. analyzing tariff changes filed by various satellite companies in the Commission’s Common Carrier Bureau. A frequent lecturer and motivational speaker and a legal commentator on various radio and television programs throughout the nation, Mr. Douglas earned his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and his law degree at the Boalt Hall School of Law of the University of California, Berkeley.