Rikki Klieman

Rikki Klieman
Rikki Klieman and husband William Bratton at LA/Valley Pride
Born	Chicago
Alma mater	Northwestern University Boston University School of Law
Occupation	Attorney Television commentator
Spouse(s)	William J. Bratton

Rikki Klieman (born 1948) is an American criminal defense lawyer and television personality for TruTV. A native of Chicago, she worked in criminal defense in Boston and taught at Columbia Law School before moving to the entertainment field. Additionally, she is an author, actress, and is married to William Bratton, former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Police Commissioner of the New York Police Department.

She was born in 1948 to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant family in Chicago, where she danced, acted, and sang as a youth. Klieman attended Northwestern University where she was a theater major and had plans of becoming an actress. However, she decided to attend law school. Klieman graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1975 with her Juris Doctor. During law school she externed for U.S. District Court judge Walter Jay Skinner.

After law school she was an assistant district attorney for the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office, before she joined the Boston, Massachusetts, law firm of Friedman & Atherton and then started her own private practice. In 1983 she was named by Time magazine as one of the five best female attorneys in the United States. From 1996 to 2003 she was a member of the faculty of Columbia Law School, and previously taught at the law school of her alma mater, Boston University.