Skakel Lawyer, in a TV Twist, Is Talk Fodder Michael C. Skakel, a former client of Mickey Sherman, above, was convicted of a 1975 murder. A judge has ordered a retrial for Mr. Skakel, citing Mr. Sherman's failures. For two decades, when the tribulations of the famous and the notorious have aired on television, Mickey Sherman has been there to talk and talk: about O. J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, Michael Vick, Casey Anthony, Michael Jackson, just to name a few whose legal cases he analyzed for the camera. When Nancy Grace needed help explaining how a man accused of murder had walked free even after the victims" bodies were found in his backyard, Mr. Sherman was there, making the CNN studio peal with laughter. "You get a client with 8 to 12 bodies buried in his yard, and there's an immediate rush to judgment that he may have done something wrong," he deadpanned. The public's insatiable appetite for true-crime programming vaulted Mr. Sherman, the assured, accessible and witty defense lawyer from Greenwich, Conn., into the flashy television-personality world of photo shoots and celebrity hobnobbing. But now Mr. Sherman is the one whom the talking heads are talking about. Last week, a Connecticut judge ordered a retrial for Mr. Sherman's most famous client, Michael C. Skakel, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy who was convicted in 2002 of killing a neighbor, Martha Moxley, when both were 15 in 1975. In a scathing, 136-page decision, the judge wrote that had Mr. Sherman not done such a poor job defending Mr. Skakel, the jury might have come to a different conclusion. "What's unusual here," John Berman of CNN said the next morning, "is that the lawyer - Mickey Sherman was a very well-known lawyer. Highly paid. Like I think he made more than a million dollars in this case. You don't usually see the adequate representation then coming into play with a high-priced celebrity lawyer in cases like this. It is fascinating, fascinating to see. The decision on Wednesday, by Judge Thomas A. Bishop, came about after Mr. Skakel's new lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, a Hail Mary gambit with historically slim odds, after they spent 11 years appealing and petitioning judges for a new trial. Calling Mr. Sherman's failures "fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense," the judge issued an assessment of his performance that might not have seemed out of place on cable TV, three times labeling Mr. Sherman's lapses "inexcusable." He said Mr. Sherman had failed to argue that a brother of Mr. Skakel's, who had fallen under suspicion at one point during the long investigation, could have killed Ms. Moxley; that he had not called a witness who could have supported Mr. Skakel's alibi; that he had not adequately contested one man's claim that Mr. Skakel had confessed the murder to him, even though there were witnesses available to challenge the claim; and that he had presented a weak closing argument without mentioning the concept of reasonable doubt, among other problems. On Friday, two days later, Mr. Sherman said he had yet to read the judge's decision, but also that he was pleased that his former client, who was sentenced to 20 years to life, might finally leave prison. "I'm not concerned about my future career or business," Mr. Sherman said. What concerns me is Michael. Like Mr. Skakel and Ms. Moxley, Mr. Sherman, 66, grew up in Greenwich, though in a decidedly less affluent part of town. A graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, he worked as a public defender and prosecutor in Stamford before starting a private practice in 1976. In 1991, a few years after The American Lawyer wrote about Mr. Sherman, the magazine's publisher, Steven Brill, asked him to appear in a program he was developing that would show trials in their entirety alongside running commentary from veteran lawyers. The pilot would become Court TV, now TruTV. One of its early programs centered on Mr. Sherman's highest-profile trial before the Skakel case, that of Roger Ligon, a Vietnam War veteran who was charged with murder for shooting someone over a parking dispute. As Court TV filmed the proceedings, Mr. Sherman constructed a novel defense, arguing that Mr. Ligon had suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Mr. Ligon was acquitted, cementing Mr. Sherman's reputation as a defense attorney - and one who recognized what television could do for his business. Susan C. Beachy, Bill Carter and Michael Cieply contributed reporting.