Jim Zirin is the host and producer of the critically acclaimed television talk show, “Digital Age,” which can be seen weekly throughout the New York metropolitan area. Guests on the show have included a range of personalities from the worlds of politics, law, business, foreign relations, national security, counterterrorism, media, lifestyles and the military.
Jim Zirin interviews New York Times Tech Columnist David Pogue
Jim is a leading litigator, having served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Criminal Division under the legendary Robert M. Morgenthau. He has represented clients in some of the most notorious financial scandals of our time. His law practice has featured the defense of major accounting firms charged with violations of professional responsibility and of substantial class actions. These matters have included the American Express salad oil and Equity Funding cases where he represented Deloitte Haskins & Sells, and the IOS and DeLorean litigations where he represented Arthur Andersen & Co. In the IOS case, he helped make new law in the area of the extraterritorial reach of the federal securities laws.
Recently, he successfully represented a take-over target against a $90 million claim for a break-up fee, and the City of New York in winning dismissal after trial of a class action seeking over $2 billion, in connection with investments made by the Teachers’ Retirement System. He recovered a large judgment for a placement agent against a substantial private equity fund after the fund appealed unsuccessfully to the United States Supreme Court.
In his broad professional experience, he has been chief counsel in white-collar criminal cases and shareholders’ litigation, as well as estates, patent infringement and directors and officers liability cases.
Jim has written over 100 op-ed articles for Forbes, Barron’s, the LA Times, the London Times, the Washington Times, the New York Sun and the New York Law Journal. He has lectured internationally on the litigation aspects of “Accessing the American Capital Markets” at the São Paulo Stock Exchange; on officers and directors liability at an insurance colloquium in Santiago, Chile; and on the resolution of China disputes through international arbitration at Fudan University, Shanghai. In August 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed him to the New York City Commission to Combat Police Corruption.
He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the past chair of its International Law Committee and a past chair of its Alternatives for Dispute Resolution Committee; a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; the board of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University; the board of trustees of New York Law School; the Consolidated Corporate Fund Leadership Committee of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the executive committee of The Pilgrims of the United States; and the Board of Editors of the New York Law Journal. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A graduate of Princeton University with honors, he received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He is listed in “Who’s Who in America.”