In 1965, Johnnie Cochran switched to the other side of the bench, entering private practice with Gerald Lenior, a prominent local attorney. According to Jrank.org, that partnership did not last long, and by the next year, Cochran had formed a new firm called Cochran, Atkins & Evans.

It was in this firm that Cochran took a case that would change his career. According to The Famous People, Cochran represented the widow of an African American man named Leonard Deadwyler. Deadwyler, as reported by The Washington Post, was speeding and ran several red lights in a desperate attempt to take his pregnant wife to the closest hospital, 20 miles from their home. When he was pulled over by the LAPD, a confrontation followed, and Deadwyler was fatally shot in the chest. The officers claimed that Deadwyler was drunk and irrational, which his widow and Cochran argued was a lie.

In Cochran’s first nationally covered case filled with racial tension, he lost in the civil suit, and no charges were filed by the district attorney’s office. Looking back on the case, Cochran had this to say: “To me, this was clearly a bad shooting, but the [district attorney] did not file charges, and when our firm filed a civil suit we lost. […] But what Deadwyler confirmed for me was that this issue of police abuse really galvanized the minority community. It taught me that these cases could really get attention.”

Cochran had found his lifelong purpose.

At one point, the “lawyer of the people” returned to work for “The Man.” According to The Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame, Johnnie Cochran became the first African American assistant district attorney in Los Angeles when he was hired to the position in 1978. He said that joining the government was the best way to become one of the “good guys” that can fight for justice within the justice system.

As an ADA, one of his subordinates was Lance Ito, who would eventually be the presiding judge in the O.J. Simpson trial, as told by Famous Trials. During his years as an assistant district attorney, Cochran was instrumental in founding the L.A. County Domestic Violence Council in 1979. Still, the racism that infected the LAPD affected Cochran personally in one scary incident.

According to Bustle, while he was driving his daughters in his Rolls-Royce, officers pulled Cochran over. They immediately demanded that he get out of the car and had their guns drawn on him. They then grabbed his bag and began to rifle through it, only to find that he was the ADA of Los Angeles County. The officers immediately began to apologize and let Cochran on his way. Cochran never publicized the incident and worried more about the effects it would have on his children. Cochran returned to private practice in 1983, founding his own law firm.

It was the O.J. Simpson trial that turned Johnnie Cochran into one of the most famous men in the country, and if someone had told Cochran this at the dawning of the double homicide investigation, he would have been more surprised than anyone. This is because Cochran had nothing to do with O.J.’s defense team in the beginning.

According to Biography, Simpson originally hired Robert Shapiro as the lead counsel for his defense team on June 15, 1994, three days after the murders of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. By January 1995, Simpson’s lawyers were no longer on speaking terms, leading to Cochran being called in and taking charge of the team. With everyone watching “The Trial of the Century,” the U.S. got to see the maestro do his work.

Cochran put the LAPD on trial, with his defense team undercutting two of the main characters of the prosecution. Criminologist Dennis Fung was forced to admit under oath he had not used proper protocol in gathering evidence, and Detective Mark Fuhrman lied under oath when he was cross-examined about using racist language in his past. The Fuhrman tapes also provided evidence of past police brutality incidents. In the end, Simpson was acquitted of the double murder. 

A decade later while eulogizing Cochran, Reverend Al Sharpton had this to say about the lawyer, as reported by The Undefeated: “With all due respect to you, Brother Simpson, we didn’t clap when the acquittal of Simpson came for O.J. We were clapping for Johnnie.”

Johnnie Cochran’s private life was as much in the spotlight as his professional life, the inevitable result of dealing with famous clients. Still, Cochran preferred to keep his personal life out of the headlines. This in part came from some disturbing accusations leveled against him by his first wife and an affair during their marriage. 

Cochran married his first wife, Barbara Berry, in 1960, and the couple had two daughters. However, according to Romper, the marriage ended in divorce in 1977, under allegations of domestic abuse. Berry claimed that during their 17 years of marriage, Cochran had hit her on numerous occasions. Eventually, she was granted a restraining order from her soon-to-be ex. Cochran denied these allegations, and his daughter later defended her father but also said, “Sometimes things can go on in marriages that children never see.”

Cochran was also seeing at least one woman outside the marriage. The famed lawyer fathered a son with a woman named Patricia Sikora, as told by Bustle. His son became a police officer, a fact of which Cochran would remind people who accused him of an anti-cop bias, so his relationship with Sikora was not a secret in his life. Berry and Sikora collaborated on a book during the fervor of the Simpson trial, Why I Left the Sweetest-Talking, Most Successful Black Lawyer in L.A. At this point, Cochran was married to Sylvia Dale. The couple tied the knot in 1985 and would remain married until his death.

According to Britannica, by the early 2000s, Cochran oversaw 10 law firms across the country; was the chairperson of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, an agency that sought economic growth in Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood; and was still representing some of the most famous Black celebrities in the world.

According to the L.A. Times, Cochran was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in December 2003. On March 29, 2005, Cochran passed away at the age of 67. San Diego Source reports that his funeral attendees included some of the biggest figures in the Black community, many of whom he had represented. Mayor James Hahn, a friend of Cochran’s, had this to say at the service: “He didn’t just love justice or admire justice — he did justice, he achieved justice, he fought for justice, he made it happen.”

During this time, Cochran was part of one last case. According to The Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, a dissatisfied client of Cochran, Ulysses Tory, had publicly protested outside of the lawyer’s office. Cochran sued Tory and won his case, with the court saying Tory “engaged in a continuous pattern of libelous and slanderous activity.” The court forbade Tory from continuing to speak about Cochran and his firm, and he appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. However, as the case began, Cochran passed away. To the majority of the justices, his death made the punishment moot, and the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Tory’s favor.