• Mercedes Colwin is an experienced lawyer, legal analyst and TV personality from New York City, USA.
• She gained a BA in English from New York University and a JD from Brooklyn Law School.
• She has had a successful career as an attorney, working as an Administrative Law Judge and partner in a New York Law firm, and has tried almost 50 cases to a verdict.
• She is the recipient of various awards, including the Graciela Olivarez award and Alumni Achievement award.
• Her net worth is estimated to be around $ million.
Contents
Mercedes Colwin is an experienced lawyer and a TV personality, who often appears in various news blocks and analytical programs as a legal analyst and defense attorney. Even though she has been on TV for a long time, still little is known about her private life. So let’s find out more about her age, husband, family, controversies, etc.
Early life and family
Mercedes Colwin was born on 26 October 1967, in New York City USA, into a family of Jewish-Latin heritage. It is known that she lost both of her parents and also one of her brothers, Arthur. All in all, Mercedes had five siblings, including the late Arthur.
She also lost her sister, mentioning in one of her Twitter posts that she was a victim of domestic violence. She doesn’t talk much about her family members, and posts personal information only on special occasions, such as birthdays or other anniversaries. Mercedes has always been a sporty person, and liked skiing from her childhood.
Educational background
Mercedes matriculated from her local high school in New York, and then entered New York University, and graduated with a BA in English. She then entered Brooklyn Law School to earn her JD.
Career
Attorney practice
Mercedes has developed a very successful career, started her attorney path from the position of the Administrative Law Judge in “New York State Division of Human Rights” in 1996, appointed by Governor Michael Pataki. She worked in this position for over nine years, at the same time holding the position of a partner in a New York Law firm. She mainly focused on such cases, filed under federal and state discrimination laws, successfully presiding over 2000 cases. During her impressive career she has tried almost 50 complicated cases to a verdict, from various jurisdictions all over the US.
Her specialty is defending corporate executives working in the co-operation “Fortune 500” when they are accused of sexual harassment. She once shared that in the cases she worked with, many victims only claimed they had been sexually abused, while in fact their only interest was money they wanted to get from the companies which would indeed want to save their reputation and pay any fee to clear their name. Several years later Mercedes was appointed in the position of the managing partner at “Gordon & Rees” New York office, where she handles a variety of litigation, also including criminal law, employment law, class actions, commercial litigation, civil rights violations, products liability and many others.
Mercedes is the member of such bars as DRI-The Voice of the Defense Bar, Professional Liability Underwriting Society, American Bar Association, The Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel and many others.
TV career
Mercedes has been a long-term Fox News legal analyst, commenting on various situations discussed on TV news blocks. She has recently been invited to give her view on Epstein’s suicide on the TV channel called “Eyewitness News”. She’s also appeared in such programs as “The O’Reilly Factor” in 2008 and 2013 in the segment “Is It Legal?”; “Disorder in the Court”, “America Live” (several times in 2013), “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (multiple times in 2014), “The Fox News Specialists” (co-hosting the show in 2017) and “Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith”, mostly appearing in 2018 and ‘19 episodes.
Awards
Notre Dame Law School rewarded Mercedes with one of the most prestigious awards in the world of attorneys – the Graciela Olivarez award for her outstanding achievements as a leading Hispanic lawyer. She was also listed in the sixth line of the Forbes Business American Airlines chart of the most influential women in the US. Her Alma Mater, The Brooklyn Law School, and the Latin American Law Students Association granted her with “Alumni Achievement Awards”.
Controversies
The only but way too critical controversy happened with Mercedes in 2017, when she was invited to comment on the hot topic of frequent cases of sexual harassment. She was not careful enough with her expressions, saying that ‘in fact victims of sexual predators were very few and far between’.
Her words were considered very offensive not only by the victims themselves, but also by all the people who watched the Hannity show, hosted by Sean Hannity. The viewers accused her of having no empathy for the victims of sexual harassment, and even doubted her competency. Hateful comments flooded her Twitter account, and she wrote words of apology to stop getting shout outs across the social media platform. She said she was profoundly sympathetic of all women who became victims of sexual harassment, and that she believed they deserved complete and full protection under the law.
She also added: ‘Having considered the comments, especially my “very few and far between” remark which has regretfully caused tumult and pain, it was made in the context of civil cases of sexual harassment that I’ve handled as an attorney and as a judge. I did not mean to imply nor do I believe, that the victims of sexual assault within society at large are “very few and far between’. Even though her words were taken to consideration, she had to leave the position of the managing partner in Gordon&Rees, becoming the founding partner instead. It is worth mentioning that the show was focused on allegations against Ray Moore, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama, who was accused of sexual harassment on teenage girls.
Personal life
Little is known about the private life of Mercedes, as she keeps details of her personal life low-key. It is known that she’s married, but apparently his name is Hans and he also works for Fox News, which her colleagues and friends from Fox News have hinted many times, so they might have met at work and fell in love with each other, however, Mercedes never confirmed such details. It is also known that Mercedes is a mother; she has one daughter whose name is also unknown. She posted photos of her husband twice on her Twitter profile – on 6 December 2014 and on 14 February 2017, writing she was blessed to be the wife of such a good person.
My amazing Valentine! I love you forever baby! #blessedtobeyourwife pic.twitter.com/nZZg731LG9
— Mercedes Colwin (@MercedesColwin) February 15, 2017
Hobbies, favorite things and interesting facts
Mercedes is a passionate traveler and likes visiting Latin countries, such as Mexico and Portugal. She is a big fan of winter sports; she likes skiing, ice-skating and snowboarding.
Social media presence
Despite the controversy around her comments on sexual harassment victims, Mercedes is still very active on her Twitter, though she has only 4,000 readers there. She doesn’t have any Instagram account, but has a page on Facebook, but isn’t very active there either. Several years ago she decided to unite all the videos with her comments on various legal issues onto her YouTube channel; however, she didn’t get any subscribers, and left the channel without any activity more than six years ago. She also has a personal website, which is in fact her attorney portfolio.
Appearance, clothing style
Mercedes has naturally dark brown long hair and brown eyes. Her height, weight and vital statistics are not available at the moment, but one can see that she keeps fit and has a very slender figure. As to her clothing style, she prefers classy looks, often wearing feminine suits, classy dresses, middle-length skirts and high heels.
Net worth and salary
Mercedes is very careful about any details about her income, however, it’s a well-known fact that an average annual salary of an attorney in New York is around $95,000. As she also works as a legal analyst at Fox News, she is supposed to earn up to $117,000 per year according to the statistics of such authoritative salary sources as Glassdoor and PayScale, so Mercedes is sure to earn something close to these numbers. Authoritative sources estimate that her net worth is well over $1 million, as of mid-2024.