She Ain't No Dope

Pro-marijuana attorney Allison Margolin is high on life

By Peter Gilstrap
Published: May 09, 2008

It’s hard to imagine an image of Marcia Clark clad in a revealing outfit and clutching a stuffed toy, advertising her law practice in the Adult Escorts section of an alt weekly newspaper, but then Clark ain’t Allison Margolin.

The 30-year-old Harvard Law School graduate—who proudly calls herself “L.A.’s Dopest Attorney”—offers services for “all criminal defense from drugs to murder,” but specializes in marijuana offenses (her thesis was titled “The Right to Get High”). Many attorneys do that, but new media-embracing Margolin has created a special niche for herself via methods Perry Mason never heard of.

The attractive, Beverly Hills High School alum gives free legal advice on her Youtube site, has maintained a “dope blog”, and can of course be found on Myspace, looking for friends and clients.

Plus, there are those cleverly placed ads, where Margolin—who favors Armani in court and baby-tees elsewhere—makes the best of her sultry looks, plentiful cleavage and seductively lidded eyes, her face sometimes surrounded by marijuana leaves.

While skeptics may scoff at the impression such unorthodox self-promotion gives, it’s gained the defense attorney notice from publications like the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Connecticut Law Review, which called her campaign “ingenious.”

“I just recognize it as a good tool, and one that can only help you, so why not take advantage? I’m into, like, tabloid journalism and things that are provocative,” says Margolin, who makes no effort to hide her Valley Girl phraseology. (In fact, she favors the speakerphone “so I can just be chillin’”). “People can get the wrong idea, but my ads say Harvard law [along with “affordable”], so I don’t think it really affects it. I’ve been underestimated at times, but as I have more years as a lawyer it’s not happening much.”

Margolin says she’s currently handling some 60 cases, mainly drug related, out of her office in the monolithic Larry Flynt building on Wilshire Blvd., home to the Hustler empire. Not far from where she grew up as a straight-edged, grade-conscious student who didn’t touch drugs or drink until she entered college at Columbia University. Which is not to say she didn’t have exposure to the dreaded weed; the daughter of lawyers, daddy is renowned marijuana criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin, since 1973 the director of the L.A. chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

“When I was young, the only people I encountered that were using drugs were my dad and his friends, so I didn’t really see people that were drug abusers,” Margolin states. “Later in life, I saw people close to me having issues with drugs, but despite that, I still don’t think criminalizing it and making people have to fear jail is helpful. I think it stigmatizes and ostracizes people from society.”