A native of Chicago, she is a legal analyst for CBS News, having previously worked in criminal defense in Boston and taught at Columbia Law School.

Klieman was born in 1948 to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant family in Chicago, where she danced, acted, and sang as a youth.

[2] In 1993 in the case of Commonwealth v. Twitchell she defended the Christian Scientist parents whose two-year-old son died of an untreated bowel obstruction.

[3] She has also acted in the guest-recurring role of lawyer Kathy Berson on TV series Las Vegas during the 2005–06 season.

[4] She also wrote her autobiography with co-author Peter Knobler, Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny.