You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

In his ninth decade, my guest today clearly still relishes his status as one of the highest profile, most controversial lawyers in the United States.

So it was that Alan Dershowitz, a self-declared liberal Democrat, was last month part of

Donald Trump's legal team making an impassioned case against the removal of the president

in his impeachment trial in the US Senate.

The legal case made by Mr. Dershowitz was derided and dismissed by many constitutional and legal experts,

but that appeared to bother him not one bit. He is used to defending what many others regard as

the indefensible.

Over a long career, his clients have included Klaus von Buello, O.J. Simpson, and the disgraced

late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. Dershowitz has always maintained that it should be no concern of

his whether his clients are guilty. He's undoubtedly defended many of them with great skill,

but over the course of a long and colourful career, has he used his legal talent wisely? Well,

he joins me on the line from Miami. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you so much. Let me start by

taking you back to the 25-year-old Alan Dershowitz.

I believe you were the youngest ever tenured law professor at law school, Harvard University Law School.

I invite you to think about what the young, idealistic Alan Dershowitz would think of the legal career you have had since then.

Do you think he would be proud?

Well, he'd be surprised. I grew up as a poor young man in Brooklyn neighborhood, and my mother

wanted me to have a little law store in the neighborhood where I helped people who had automobile

accidents. And obviously,

I've had a very different career. I think he'd be very proud. He'd say, look, Alan Dershowitz

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