One of my lawyer friends once told me that there was no money in doing criminal law because 99 percent of defendents are deadbeats and s***heels who never pay anyway. That's one of the reasons, I guess, that only a small handful of lawyers--Slotnick, Cutler, Shargel, Kuby, Kreiger, and not many others--seem to be associated with big-time Mob cases.
I believe that Cochran was known as one of LA's top criminal lawyers--if not the top--before the OJ case. But OJ catapulted him to national prominence, which is why he moved to NYC.