The Nice-Guy Lawyer for America’s Tabloid Villains

Mr. Aidala’s mom, Mary Ann Piazza Aidala, was a schoolteacher. His father, Louis Aidala, is a lawyer who labored for Frank Hogan, the Manhattan district lawyer. Louis Aidala turned a protection lawyer, representing purchasers together with Eyad Ismoil, who was convicted of abetting the 1993 bombing of the World Commerce Heart, and Jennifer Lopez when she was a witness in 1999 nightclub taking pictures that concerned her boyfriend on the time, the hip-hop artist Sean Combs.

Arthur Aidala and Ms. Bertuna, his spouse and regulation accomplice, reside up the block from his dad and mom with their 5-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter. Ms. Bertuna, 45, was lately named counsel to the Kings County Public Administrator. She started her profession as Mr. Aidala’s intern, and so they married in 2016, a yr after he was divorced. (Mr. Aidala additionally has a 16-year-old son from his first marriage.)

Mr. Aidala dates his early authorized training to watching his father put together his instances, and to his personal involvement in musical theater at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, the place he attended highschool. Hoping to turn into an expert actor, he attended the State College of New York at Buy (alumni embody Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci), however realized shortly that he was extra desirous about political science. After graduating, he enrolled in regulation college at Metropolis College of New York.

He didn’t shelve his goals of performing, although. He simply discovered a distinct form of stage. Throughout closing arguments for a latest homicide trial, he theatrically waved an undelivered Mom’s Day card as proof of how tirelessly he, a momma’s boy, had been working, and at one level fell to his knees proper in entrance of the jury field.

“If you wish to maintain 12 human beings’ consideration for hours,” he mentioned, “I don’t assume standing at a podium and studying from notes is an efficient approach.”

Dinner with the Scalias

From the time Mr. Aidala was 16, his dad and mom despatched him every summer season to Italy to attach with the household’s roots. After his second yr of regulation college, he attended a study-abroad program in Siena at which Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Courtroom justice, taught for per week. The primary night time the justice and his spouse have been there, Mr. Aidala hosted a celebration within the pupil villa, cooking dinner for them and his fellow college students.