The Wall Street Journal

How a Lawyer in the Hamptons Became the King of DWI Cases

For elites inclined to hedonistic summers, criminal defense lawyer Edward Burke Jr. can make a simple drunk-driving charge all but disappear

Edward Burke Jr. knows the ins and outs of a byzantine system of local courts—and how not to tick off the wrong people.

EDWARD BURKE JR. spends most of the year handling drug cases, traffic offenses, larceny and white-collar crime. But during the summer, when this criminal defense lawyer’s stretch of eastern Long Island turns into a playground for the rich, his focus is on clients arrested for driving while intoxicated—an offense he calls a “Deewee.”

“It is,” he says, “the ‘it’ charge.” 

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