Before he became famous for being the co-creator of the hit Showtime hit Billions, Brian Koppelman ’95 was an evening student at Fordham Law School.
He recently told students in the Fordham Media and Entertainment Law Society that law school was never a part of his plans growing up, but added it helped his career path as a successful film and television writer, director, showrunner, and producer.
Since graduating from the Law School’s evening division program, Koppleman has contributed his extraordinary vision and talents to some of the most well-known film and TV titles in the last 25 years including Rounders (1998), Runaway Jury (2003), Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), and Billions (2016-2023). While he is considered a legend in the industry, Koppelman admitted that he was afraid to become a writer.
“I felt that I wasn’t fulfilled and challenged intellectually enough in what I was doing, and I wanted [to do]something that would make me play at the top of my game,” said Koppelman, explaining his decision to apply to law school while working in the music industry at the time. “At the same time, I had also read A Season for Justice: The Life and Times of Civil Rights Lawyer Morris Dees by Morris Dees. The way he talked about the ways that somebody can try to fix what they see is wrong in the world, I thought law school might be a good way to see if this was the way to do it.”
Koppelman returned to Fordham Law on Feb. 7 to meet with students at a fireside chat with Dean Matthew Diller.
Koppelman recalled the impact of a conversation with Dean Emeritus John D. Feerick ’61, who was in the audience.
“Dean Feerick, you won’t remember this because it was insignificant to you, but it meant a lot to me,” Koppelman said “You, Tim Brosnan ’84, and I had a meeting in your office [when I was applying to law school], and the first thing you said to me—because I came in and told you about wanting to bring about change [in the world]—was, ‘Look, you’ve accomplished a lot and it makes sense that you’d want to come here, but you should know you might get something different out of it than you think. I’m not sure law school is going to do that for you.’ You were really honest and direct with me … and you were 100% right.”
He continued, “When I was wobbling at times, I remembered what you said. It [the advice]was a good North Star.”
Professor Abraham Abramovsky teaching in 1986. (Photo from FLASH/The Fordham Law Maloney Library archive)
Koppelman also revealed some inside information about some of his on-screen characters. He said the Martin Landau character, Professor Abe Petrovsky, in his and his partner David Levien’s first film, Rounders, was inspired by Fordham Law Criminal Law Professor Abraham Abramovsky. Koppelman took two classes with Abramovsky, who joined the Law School in 1979 and died in 2007—one that was co-taught by Adjunct Professor Eric Seidel, a former assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office who served as supervisor in the Homicide Bureau and chief of the Organized Crime Bureau at the time, and another class during his final year of law school.
“Abe had his own peculiar way of talking about justice, but his innate deep understanding of ultimate moral right and wrong was incredibly powerful,” said Koppelman, recalling Abramovsky’s passion for helping others. “That was an amazing thing to be a part of, and also, as a writer, to understand that it wasn’t only duality at play. It was a panoply of aspects of this person’s personality and life force. To see all of that in a complicated, good human who was here for students, but also trying to solve something ineffable for himself was the kind of thing that I’ve been writing about ever since meeting him.”
Koppelman added that the Matt Damon character in Rounders was originally envisioned by him and Levien as a Fordham Law evening division student “who’s caught between other people’s notions of the way one should live a life and what’s in his heart.”
“We think there’s a great moral need to figure out how to live the truest version of your life as long as that’s not destructive,” he said of his and Levien’s vision when writing the script. “That journey and the way Petrovsky sees the world when he decides to do what he calls a mitzvah, mattered to us.”
“I think, if you form dramatic constructs, you have a duty to infuse those dramatic constructs with what you think is right or wrong about the world we’re living in, with a hope to change it for the better,” Koppelman added. “We certainly endeavor to do that in the work. It’s to other people to decide whether we succeed at that.”
Though the series Billions ended after seven seasons in October 2023, Koppelman said that he is working on new projects. He and Levien are working with The Bear creator Christopher Storer, who will be directing The Winter of Frankie Machine, an adaptation of the 2006 Don Winslow novel, at Paramount Pictures using the script originally written by Koppelman and Levien.
