By Jenna Greene
Renouncing any further political ambitions, former U.S. senator and two-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has returned to the practice of law, confident that potential clients and juries will look past the personal transgressions that pushed him from public life.
Edwards is joining forces with his daughter Cate and former law partner David Kirby to launch EdwardsKirby, a plaintiffs firm with a public interest focus. One of the most successful trial lawyers in North Carolina history, Edwards, 60, said Monday in an interview with The National Law Journal that practicing law is "what I was born to do."
His image was tarnished by a very public sex scandal, when in 2008 he fathered a child by his then-mistress Rielle Hunter while his wife Elizabeth was battling breast cancer. Edwards, whose wife died two years later, initially denied paternity, going along with a claim that an aide fathered the child—details that were re-aired in a federal campaign finance prosecution against him and a pair of tell-all books.
The question is, will juries hold his misdeeds against him? Edwards said he didn't think so.
"What I know is that juries do the right thing over and over and over," Edwards said in an interview Monday in Raleigh. "They judge cases as they should, based on what's put in front of them. ... I still believe they'll do that."
Read the rest of the story at The National Law Journal here. Contact Jenna Greene at [email protected].
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