Law Offices of Julie Rendelman: The Brooklyn Homicide Bureau Deputy Chief Who Now Takes Apart Prosecutions

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For twenty years, Julie Rendelman was the prosecution. She rose from Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn to Deputy Bureau Chief of the office’s elite Homicide Bureau, serving as lead counsel in more than sixty felony jury trials and prosecuting cases that made national news — including the conviction of Levi Aron for the murder of nine-year-old Leiby Kletzky. Since crossing over, she has run a Midtown Manhattan defense practice built on the premise that no one dismantles a prosecution like someone who spent two decades building them.

At a Glance

Firm	Law Offices of Julie Rendelman, LLC
Principal Attorney	Julie Rendelman; senior team includes attorney Jenn Peters, repeatedly named alongside Rendelman in client reviews
Office	535 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2525, New York, NY 10017 (Midtown Manhattan, between East 44th and 45th Streets)
Focus	State and federal criminal defense across all five boroughs — homicide, sex crimes, white-collar and fraud matters, domestic violence, drug and firearms charges, DWI, and pre-charge investigations
Background	Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney’s Office, 1994–2014: lead counsel in 60+ felony jury trials; Senior Trial Attorney; Deputy Bureau Chief, Homicide Bureau
Admissions	New York (1993); U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of New York; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Education	J.D., Brooklyn Law School; later Adjunct Professor of Criminal Procedure at the same school while a prosecutor
Fee Structure	Free initial consultation

Career History

Rendelman was admitted to the New York bar in 1993 and joined the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in 1994, where she spent two decades — hundreds of criminal investigations and prosecutions, more than sixty felony jury trials as lead counsel, promotion to Senior Trial Attorney, and ultimately Deputy Bureau Chief of the Homicide Bureau. Her prosecutorial record includes some of the borough’s most consequential cases: the conviction of Levi Aron for the 2011 murder of Leiby Kletzky, the conviction of Horace Moore for the murder of bus driver Edwin Thomas, and the 2012 murder-for-hire conviction of Ragene Powell Dickerson. While prosecuting, she also taught Criminal Procedure as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School. She left in 2014 to found her defense practice, and is a member of the New York City Bar Association, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Her commentary has appeared on radio and television.

Practice Concentration

The practice is criminal defense, full stop — state and federal, from misdemeanors and desk appearance tickets through homicide, at every stage from pre-charge investigation to trial. The federal side spans matters involving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, FBI, IRS, and DEA; the state side covers all five boroughs’ courts. Her Super Lawyers designations — Criminal Defense, White Collar, and DUI/DWI — track the practice’s actual spread, and the homicide-bureau formation matters most at the felony end: a defense lawyer who has personally built murder prosecutions knows precisely where the government’s cases are engineered to bend and where they break.

Track Record

The verifiable record is the prosecutorial career itself — the named convictions above are matters of public record — plus twenty-five-plus years of combined courtroom experience. On the defense side, the firm’s review record describes dismissals, favorable negotiated outcomes, and cases resolved quickly and discreetly; these are client-reported outcomes attributed as such, and the firm does not publish an itemized dispositions ledger. Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case.

Client Voice

The review base is large and strong: a 4.9-star aggregate across 183 reviews on the firm’s Google profile. Clients describe Rendelman as knowledgeable, direct, and constantly reachable — one called her a “skillful, masterful negotiator” who resolved a case quickly — and reviews repeatedly credit the Rendelman-Peters pairing; a referring defense colleague of many years called her widely respected in the criminal courts. Per our disclosure policy, the record’s most negative entry is reported rather than omitted: one client who paid a $20,000 fee complained of late court appearances and no refund, while acknowledging that both of their cases were dismissed for lack of evidence — the grievance ran to service and fees, not outcome. This research did not surface any public disciplinary findings.

Beyond the Courtroom

Rendelman’s teaching post at Brooklyn Law School — training future practitioners in Criminal Procedure while running homicide prosecutions — is the standout service entry, alongside her continuing membership in the defense bar’s professional organizations and her public legal commentary in broadcast media, which functions as public education on how the criminal system actually works.

Recognition

Rendelman holds Super Lawyers selection with Criminal Defense, White Collar, and DUI/DWI designations — peer-informed recognition from a commercial publication, categorized as such rather than as certification. The weightier credentials are institutional: two decades of promotion inside one of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s offices, culminating in deputy leadership of its Homicide Bureau, and a law school’s decision to put her in front of its Criminal Procedure students. A disclosure we apply to every New York profile: New York State does not operate a board certification program for legal specialties comparable to the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, so no New York attorney profile on this site will describe its subject as a state-certified specialist, and this profile attributes no certification to Rendelman.

New York Legal Backdrop

A New York criminal case moves on statutory clocks that defendants rarely know exist. After arrest, arraignment generally must occur within about twenty-four hours; a felony defendant held on bail must be released under CPL § 180.80 if the prosecution fails to secure grand jury action within the statutory period (120 hours, or 144 hours spanning a weekend or holiday). CPL § 30.30 sets speedy-trial clocks — six months on most felonies, ninety days on class A misdemeanors — that run against the prosecution and can end a case outright. New York’s discovery reform, CPL Article 245, obligates prosecutors to turn over their evidence on an automatic timetable, transforming how early a defense can test the government’s proof. And CPL § 160.59 permits sealing of up to two eligible convictions after a ten-year crime-free period — the long-tail relief that makes the difference between a past and a permanent record. None of this is legal advice; consult a licensed New York attorney about your situation.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

The case for Rendelman is the depth of the prosecutorial pedigree — not merely “former prosecutor,” a phrase this category wears thin, but twenty years, sixty-plus felony jury trials as lead counsel, and deputy leadership of a homicide bureau, with nationally covered convictions to show for it. Add the teaching credential, federal-court reach, a Midtown office, a large and specific review record, and a named second attorney clients praise in her own right, and this is among the most credentialed criminal defense profiles in this directory.

The honest trade-offs, stated plainly: this is a boutique, not a bench of twenty lawyers — clients with sprawling multi-defendant federal matters should ask about staffing capacity. The firm publishes no itemized results ledger, so the defense-side record rests on client reports rather than a verifiable table. And the review record, while overwhelmingly positive, includes the fee-and-service complaint disclosed above, which prospective clients can raise directly at consultation.

Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was researched and written independently by Awesome Attorneys in August 2026 without the participation, sponsorship, or payment of the Law Offices of Julie Rendelman, LLC. Primary sources: the firm’s website (rendelmanlaw.com), including the attorney biography and office-location pages. Independent verification: Super Lawyers profile (1994–2014 prosecutorial tenure; lead-prosecutor role in hundreds of investigations; the Aron, Moore, and Dickerson convictions; practice designations); the firm’s biography page (1993 bar admission; federal district and Second Circuit admissions; Brooklyn Law School adjunct professorship; bar association memberships); Google review aggregate via Trustindex (4.9 stars, 183 reviews, including the negative review disclosed above); Lawyers.com and FindLaw listings (practice scope and client reviews). Statutes cited in the New York Legal Backdrop were verified against the New York Criminal Procedure Law (§§ 30.30, 160.59, 180.80, and Article 245). Names of convicted defendants appear as matters of public court record.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal-directory publisher. This profile was not paid for by the Law Offices of Julie Rendelman, LLC, and inclusion in our editorial coverage cannot be purchased. Our methodology and editorial standards are applied consistently across all firms we cover.