Legal clues help King & Spalding partner win on ‘Jeopardy’

After being a “Jeopardy” fan for decades, King & Spalding LLP Los Angeles partner Aaron B. Craig finally made it onto the TV show and won two games. His background as a business and entertainment litigator played a big part in his success, he said.

“I’ve learned a lot of subject matter about a lot of different businesses and industries,” Craig said. “When you get a new case and a new client, you really learn their business and a lot of that knowledge helped me in the game.”

Craig had auditioned for the show in 1999 after passing the written test. But he never heard back and gave up on the idea until he saw a Facebook ad. Because of the pandemic, he auditioned over Zoom in the summer and got a call back saying that he got in.

Although he was nervous, Craig said that his background helped him handle curveballs and think fast when things went wrong.

There were some incidents when the “Jeopardy” judges had to confer about whether a specific answer was right or wrong, which he said could rattle some people.

“That happens to a lot of people. They get one wrong, and then they freeze up and don’t answer anything else for the rest of the show,” Craig said. “That definitely didn’t happen to me. I credit that to my experience in front of judges and juries.”

It also did not hurt that some of the questions were directly related to his work. One category was called “subpoenas” and he got most of the answers right.

“There was another legal clue in one of my other categories, and the answer was ‘disbarred,’ and I got it right,” Craig said. “And I said, ‘What is disbarred? Which is something I hope I will never be.’”

Craig ended up winning more than $50,000. He said the money will go into his children’s college fund.

“It was an amazing experience,” Craig said. “It really is a dream come true to become a two-time ‘Jeopardy’ champion.”