By Seb Leroy
Staff Writer
Judy Sheindlin, the sharp-tongued judge known as Judge Judy, is retiring after 30 years of courtroom television and her no-nonsense approach to small claims cases. Her Prime Video series, “Judy Justice,” airs its final episode on Oct. 22.
Her retirement doesn't mean she's done with entertainment, but just with being in front of the camera. On “Good Morning America,” she said it's time to "take the message and put it in a little bit of a different form."
“I have a lot of other things of interest,” she told People. Those include an animated series based on her life and “Adam's Law,” a small claims show starring her son, Adam Levy, which she is an executive producer.
Sheindlin's path to the bench started far from a television studio. After passing the New York bar examination in 1965, she worked as a corporate lawyer for a cosmetics company, but was unhappy there and left after about two years to raise her children. She returned to law in 1972 as a prosecutor in New York's family court system, trying cases including child support and juvenile delinquency.
Her rise began in 1982, when Mayor Ed Koch appointed her to the criminal court. In 1986, she became the supervising judge of the family court's Manhattan division. Her blunt, fast-moving style in child abuse and neglect cases drew national attention after a Los Angeles Times profile and a segment on “60 Minutes.” Television producers noticed both, and she accepted an offer to preside over a courtroom series of her own. “Judge Judy” debuted on Sept. 16, 1996.
“Judge Judy” ran for 25 seasons on CBS before ending in July 2021. A few months later, Sheindlin was back on the bench with “Judy Justice,” which premiered Nov. 1, 2021, on IMDb TV, a streaming service that has since been absorbed into Prime Video. Both shows starred Sheindlin, so the format stayed familiar, but the move to streaming came with a new supporting cast that includes her granddaughter, Sarah Rose Levy, as law clerk.
Levy now has a courtroom of his own. “Adam's Law,” which launched this month, is his first solo series. "There aren't a lot of people who can carry a half hour on their own unscripted," Sheindlin told People. "He has what it takes."
Levy grew up learning self-reliance from his mother. When he asked for baseball cards, she told him to earn the money himself. He also followed her into law, graduating from Hofstra Law School in 1992. After working in private practice, he served two terms as Putnam County's district attorney from 2008 to 2015. In 2023, he joined the three-judge panel of “Tribunal Justice,” a courtroom series that debuted on Amazon Freevee.
Sheindlin, who turns 84 on Oct. 21, built her reputation on blunt one-liners like “Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining,” which later became the title of her book. The last episode of “Judy Justice” airs the next day.
