The Nice-Guy Lawyer for America’s Tabloid Villains

Mr. Aidala’s mother, Mary Ann Piazza Aidala, was a schoolteacher. His father, Louis Aidala, is a lawyer who worked for Frank Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney. Louis Aidala became a defense lawyer, representing clients including Eyad Ismoil, who was convicted of abetting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Jennifer Lopez when she was a witness in 1999 nightclub shooting that involved her boyfriend at the time, the hip-hop artist Sean Combs.

Arthur Aidala and Ms. Bertuna, his wife and law partner, live up the block from his parents with their 5-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter. Ms. Bertuna, 45, was recently named counsel to the Kings County Public Administrator. She began her career as Mr. Aidala’s intern, and they married in 2016, a year after he was divorced. (Mr. Aidala also has a 16-year-old son from his first marriage.)

Mr. Aidala dates his early legal education to watching his father prepare his cases, and to his own involvement in musical theater at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, where he attended high school. Hoping to become a professional actor, he attended the State University of New York at Purchase (alumni include Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci), but realized quickly that he was more interested in political science. After graduating, he enrolled in law school at City University of New York.

He didn’t shelve his dreams of performing, though. He just found a different sort of stage. During closing arguments for a recent murder trial, he theatrically waved an undelivered Mother’s Day card as proof of how tirelessly he, a momma’s boy, had been working, and at one point fell to his knees right in front of the jury box.

“If you want to hold 12 human beings’ attention for hours,” he said, “I don’t think standing at a podium and reading from notes is an effective way.”

Dinner with the Scalias

From the time Mr. Aidala was 16, his parents sent him each summer to Italy to connect with the family’s roots. After his second year of law school, he attended a study-abroad program in Siena at which Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice, taught for a week. The first night the justice and his wife were there, Mr. Aidala hosted a party in the student villa, cooking dinner for them and his fellow students.