Ask Arthur Aidala what occupies him most these days and the answer is not a famous client or a courtroom victory. It is the firm itself. “The funny part is the big thing that I’m working on right now, honestly, is managing the law firm,” he says.
That firm is Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, PC, the New York practice where Aidala serves as managing partner across criminal defense, civil litigation, appeals and corporate work. After more than thirty years in criminal law, his attention has turned from winning the next case to building an institution that keeps winning them without him.
Aidala arrived at defense work from the other side of the courtroom. As a senior assistant district attorney in Kings County, he tried dozens of felony cases during one of the most violent stretches in the city’s history, and that prosecutorial schooling still shapes how he prepares: he knows how the other table thinks.
The practice he built on that foundation is deliberately broad. The firm fields twenty attorneys covering nearly every major practice area, and its docket has ranged across securities fraud, accounting and bank fraud, RICO charges, bribery, bid-rigging, extortion and embezzlement, along with matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA and the U.S. Department of Justice. The range lets the firm move between multimillion-dollar business disputes and major criminal trials without missing a step.
Range, though, is not the quality Aidala emphasizes. Culture is. “We’re not really a law firm,” he says. “We’re a family that practices law.” It is a pointed rejection of the cold, hierarchical office, and colleagues describe a workplace built on candor and collaboration rather than internal competition.
Two matters mark the public arc of his career. The first was the New York City crane collapse, at the time the largest crane accident in city history. Seven people were killed, Manhattan’s East Side shut down, and prosecutors worked under intense public pressure to hold someone accountable. Aidala defended crane operator William Rapetti and, convinced of his client’s innocence, taught himself the technical side of crane operations. “I literally was reading books on cranes,” he says. Rapetti won a favorable verdict, and the two men are still in touch. Every July 22, the anniversary of that verdict, Aidala’s phone lights up with a text from his former client.
The second came in 2024, when New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s conviction in one of the most scrutinized appeals in the country. Taking on the case drew criticism, but Aidala framed it as a question of process rather than person. “No matter how much of a villain somebody is, they’re still entitled to the basic rights that we’re all entitled to,” he says. The ruling itself landed harder. “The highest court in the state basically said no matter who the defendant is, the rules still matter.”
Outside the courtroom, Aidala has become a fixture of legal media, hosting The Arthur Aidala Power Hour on weekday evenings on AM 970 The Answer, where colleagues join him to work through breaking legal developments. He treats the broadcast the same way he treats the office. “I try to create an environment that encourages camaraderie and collaboration.”
That instinct now drives his succession thinking. Aidala deliberately hands younger attorneys courtroom time, media exposure and real responsibility, preparing them to lead. “My number one priority is to keep the firm going beyond me,” he says. “I don’t want them to have to need me. When I’m done, I want the firm rocking and rolling.”
Away from work, the priorities narrow to family, friends and neighborhood. He is still close with people he has known since kindergarten, and he speaks of his wife, Marianne Bertuna, his law partner as well as his spouse, and of their children with open gratitude. “You pinch yourself about how lucky I am,” he says.
Three decades of difficult cases would be a career on their own. Aidala is betting his most durable work is the place those cases built, and the people who will run it next. The firm is profiled at aidalalaw.com.
