A chandelier in a second-story window on East 66th Street goes dark, and the lawyer steps out of his town house. He walks toward Park Avenue and settles into an unhurried amble for nine blocks, clutching a black briefcase whose color matches his combed-back hair. He passes doormen, tourists, dog-walking ladies, joggers. His hunched shoulders and slight limp suggest a laborer joylessly shuffling toward the morning whistle — except it is 6:30 p.m. and he is wearing French cuffs.

In this manner on a given weeknight, Mark Jay Heller, 64, arrives at a generic ninth-floor office to meet his clients: angry husbands, bitter wives, slip-and-fall victims, people who are bankrupt. It is an unorthodox routine, but there is little about the on-and-off law firm of Heller & Heller that one would call orthodox, starting with its continued existence.

Even within the colorful, eccentric, sometimes disreputable and profane galaxy that is the New York City bar, Mr. Heller stands out for the severe thrashings he has endured and his audacious aspirations for high-profile work. He has been disparaged and roundly dressed down by clients and judges alike, called a “menace to the public,” “shockingly cavalier and abusive” and rife with “puffery” by a disciplinary panel that recommended his five-year suspension in the mid-1990s. Opposing counsel has been known to quietly suggest that his clients consider finding a new lawyer. Among his most outspoken fans is a serial killer.

His recent celebrity cases, aspiring to the B list, play out before the cameras, Mr. Heller’s teeth bared against a tanned face. He handled Jon Gosselin’s divorce, sort of. He represented the so-called Manhattan Madam, briefly. He stood by the base-jumper who tried to parachute off the Empire State Building.

Then there was David W. Johnson, a top aide to Gov. David A. Paterson who was accused of assaulting his companion while she was in a Halloween costume. Mr. Heller became Mr. Johnson’s lawyer and, according to a person close to the case, shared his plan to stage a news conference and unveil a “French maid” costume similar to the one the woman wore. With whiplash speed, he was fired.

“He’ll take any side of the coin,” said Daniel C. Minc, a lawyer who has known Mr. Heller for 20 years. “He’s like a moth to a flame.”
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A watershed moment came at age 31, when he was hired by the half-sister of David Berkowitz, the infamous “Son of Sam,” who was arrested on the hot night of Aug. 10, 1977, for killing six people and wounding seven others.

“I liked Mark,” Mr. Berkowitz said in a prison interview last month.“He was just a very easygoing guy, like a college student almost, kind of like more my age.”

Mr. Heller clashed with other members of the defense team, and was off the case after a month. But he would return to the experience for years to come.
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WENDY Sue Fogel, who hired Mr. Heller to represent her in a divorce in 1990, recalled him as “a smooth, charming, fast-talking lawyer” who asked for $15,000 up front.

“He missed hearings and repeatedly did not return my calls,” Ms. Fogel said 20 years later. “And I dreaded hearing from him because he was doing nothing in my case and was verbally abusive with me.” She filed a complaint that made its way to a hearing panel of a disciplinary committee of an Appellate Division of State Supreme Court of New York. Mr. Heller urged another woman involved in a divorce case, Nereida Sorotos, to withdraw everything she had in the bank for his legal fees, telling her, “You must bring it now; time is against you.” Ms. Sorotos gave him $14,000. She, too, filed a complaint.

A third client, Gloria Galeano, hired Mr. Heller in 1991 to represent her father, who had been arrested in Nassau County on a charge of selling cocaine. “We went to the Yellow Pages and wanted an attorney from Manhattan because we thought they are the best,” she said in an interview. “He claimed to play golf with the judge in my father’s case, and that he would pay him off.”

Ms. Galeano, a court stenographer, said that her family paid Mr. Heller about $50,000, and her father was sentenced to five years to life in prison. Afterwards, she said, she called Mr. Heller, who told her the judge had “reneged on the deal” and hung up on her. She also filed a complaint.

In January 1993, the departmental disciplinary committee for the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department charged Mr. Heller with deceit, puffery, abusive treatment of clients, fee gouging, neglect and willful failure to return unearned retainers to his clients. He eventually agreed to a stipulation containing substantial admissions of professional misconduct. Eighteen of the counts against him, involving 11 clients, were sustained.

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He looked around for something to do and lit on the buttons on his telephone. “I had been astounded at the success of companies like 1-800-FLOWERS and 1-800-MATTRESS,” he testified at his reinstatement hearing. He and his wife, Debra, created numbers like 1-800-MY-PLUMBER, 1-800-DENTAL-911 and 1-800-LAWYER-911. Working with the executive director of a watchdog organization, the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, Mr. Heller wrote an 18-page pamphlet that his old clients might have found handy: “Avoiding Grief With a Lawyer — a Practical Guide.”

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In 2004, Debora Wolff, a family friend, approached Mr. Heller for help with a divorce. She gave him a $35,000 retainer, she wrote later in an affidavit.

When she fired him after six months and demanded what was left of the retainer, Mr. Heller told her it “had been exhausted,” she wrote. She sued, accusing him of ignoring her case. Her new lawyer, Karen Golden, reviewed Mr. Heller’s billings: “What struck me more than anything were the many hours — almost half of what was billed to Ms. Wolff — of time spent ‘reading,’ ‘analyzing,’ ‘organizing,’ ‘outlining,’ ‘detailing,’ ‘drafting,’ ‘preparing’ and ‘reviewing,’ ” Ms. Golden wrote in court papers.

Mr. Heller fought back. His colleague, Mr. Toumbekis, described in an affidavit many lengthy telephone conversations with what he called a “needy” client, saying that Ms. Wolff ’s treatment for alcohol abuse put her out of touch for weeks at a time.

In 2006, Acting Justice Gary J. Weber of State Supreme Court in Suffolk County ordered Mr. Heller to pay Ms. Wolff $35,000, plus interest, noting: “He was suspended from the practice of law for a period of five years under circumstances strikingly similar to those before the Court.”

By then, Mr. Heller had reached out to his first famous client. “Out of nowhere he wrote me a letter just to say ‘hi,’ to tell me what was going on in his life,” Mr. Berkowitz said. “He had said I was on his mind a lot.” The rekindled acquaintance was well-timed: Mr. Berkowitz was in a dispute with another lawyer over his personal memorabilia.

“He says, ‘It’s not my policy to really go against another attorney, but I am definitely going to help you,’ ” Mr. Berkowitz said. “His legal team put in hundreds of hours of work, and I had nothing to give them.” He called Mr. Heller a “godsend.”

MR. Heller returned to the spotlight in 2008 when he was hired to represent Kristin Davis, the Manhattan Madam (and now a third party candidate for governor). Charged with money laundering and promoting prostitution, she was stewing at Rikers Island in lieu of $2 million in bail.
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“Heller told me that a bail reduction was not necessary because he was going to get the case dismissed,” she said. “Every time we went to court, he is saying, ‘Kristin, we are going to get you out today.’ ”

Ms. Davis said that about 10 days after she hired a new lawyer, she was released on a reduced bail of $400,000. She eventually pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution and was sentenced to time served in jail and five years’ probation.

By then, she had filed a complaint against Mr. Heller, saying she had paid him $50,000 in legal fees and given him $125,000 and jewelry as collateral for her bail. Ms. Davis said he returned the jewelry only after she hired a private investigator. The disciplinary committee took no action.

When Jonathan K. Gosselin, the father of twins and sextuplets on the reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” appeared on “Larry King Live” amid the tabloid frenzy over his being photographed in nightclubs with women who were not Kate, he assured Mr. King that things were looking up. “I have a great lawyer now,” Mr. Gosselin said. “Mark Heller.”

For the divorce case, Mr. Heller needed to gain admission to the bar in Pennsylvania, where the Gosselins lived. It is a routine process requiring that a local lawyer vouch for the outsider; Michael Marino, who is semiretired after a career that included a stint as the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., agreed to sponsor the stranger.

“Here’s where I’m the jerk,” Mr. Marino said later, because he knew nothing about the case or the celebrities in it. “I don’t want to sound like a snob, but I don’t watch that kind of television.”

Having a sponsor did not help Mr. Heller. Ms. Gosselin’s lawyers successfully challenged his appearance, saying he violated Pennsylvania’s rules requiring applicants to list every time they had been suspended, disbarred or otherwise disciplined. So at court hearings, Mr. Heller had to sit in the gallery with the rest of the onlookers.
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Mr. Heller will turn 65 this year. At an age when many lawyers might consider packing it in, he is still shaking the trees. “Death Cases, Accident Cases, Birth Injuries,” his full-page ad in the Yellow Book proclaims. “Machine Injuries. Slip & Fall Injuries. Lead Paint Poisoning.” And: “Auto, Subway & Bus Accidents. Divorces.”

The list goes on, offering Mark Heller’s services from cradle to grave and for every moment of hard luck along the way. Just dial 1-800-LAWYER-911.