A New Face in TV Justice : A respected lawyer who’s tackled domestic violence needed a challenge. So she took on ‘Divorce Court.’

Order in the court.

Who will go home with a disputed mink coat--the soon-to-be-ex-wife or her cross-dressing husband? They both should try it on and see who looks better, ordered Mablean Ephriam, the veteran Los Angeles attorney who presides over a revival of “Divorce Court,” debuting on Fox today.

Guess who got the coat.

“He was in a dress, and he had long, beautiful hair,” Ephriam says over coffee near her Silver Lake home. “His nails were freshly manicured. They’re better than mine. His makeup was nice. He has beautiful structure.”

What wasn’t nice, she said, was the way the wife kept referring to her husband as “It.”

“I said, ‘Who is ‘It’? That’s your husband. That’s a human being. You will either refer to him by his name or you will refer to him as your husband, but you will not refer to him as ‘It.’ ”

Ephriam says such lack of civility is common when it comes to the down-and-dirty business of dividing the spoils of failed marriages.

“Divorce court is where you see the average citizen at his worst, and criminal court is where you see the worst person at his best,” she says. “Criminals put on a suit and tie so you won’t think they’re that creep who just used an ax to cut up 10 people. And divorce court brings out the worst in people.”

Ephriam, who is both tough and funny, came by her street smarts in the courtrooms of L.A.

“I don’t think they could have picked a better person,” says U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-L.A.). “Not only is she a very competent attorney, I know her to be warm, engaging and no-nonsense.”

Waters crossed paths with Ephriam in 1982 when Ephriam helped establish a legal resource center in South-Central L.A. for women coping with domestic violence. The clinic, set up to compensate for legal aid cutbacks, is now located in Mid-Wilshire and called the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law. Its 80 volunteer attorneys help about 1,000 women with their cases each year.

The Buhai center’s executive director, Betty Nordwind, credits Ephriam with getting things done by virtue of her “larger-than-life personality. . . . She has a basic sense of justice and a way of seeing the truth of the matter that many lawyers do not have.”

Ephriam, who has raised a family of four, graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont and got her law degree in 1978 after attending Whittier College of Law at night.

In the early ‘80s, Ephriam was a deputy city attorney battling domestic violence on another front--she helped start the Domestic Violence Prosecution Unit of the L.A. city attorney’s office.

“At the time, society was turning its back on domestic violence and pretending it didn’t exist,” Ephriam says. “And when we filed a criminal case, the female victim would usually say, ‘I don’t want to testify.’

“That’s when the city attorney’s office said, ‘We are not dismissing the case because the victim says, “I don’t want to prosecute.” ’ More police were injured in response to domestic violence calls than anything else, and you put them in a precarious position when you do that. Also, when you don’t follow through, it says to the perpetrator, ‘You can do this again.’ ”

In 1982, she started her own firm, which now deals with family law, personal injury and criminal law. During her career, she has served as the president of L.A.’s Black Women Lawyers group and received the 1995 California Woman of the Year Award from the state Assembly’s 48th District.

When Ephriam heard through the lawyer’s grapevine that Twentieth Television was looking for a judge for “Divorce Court,” she saw it as a fresh challenge.

“I’m 50. Why not change going into my second part of the century by doing something new and different?”

“Divorce Court’s” executive producer, Jill Blackstone, says Ephriam was the only judge wannabe out of 100 to nail her audition on the first try. Unlike the classic TV drama, the new “Divorce Court” will feature real couples who agree to televised mediation of their property and custody disputes.

But why would people discuss their personal grievances on the air?

“I imagine the divorce court process on television is cathartic,” Ephriam says. “When you’re in [regular] divorce court, rarely do the litigants speak. Most of the courts these days don’t really care about the reasons why you’re divorcing--the underlying infidelity, the financial problems, the difficulty in raising children. So you really don’t get an opportunity to get rid of the pent-up frustration and anger and pain. This is a form that allows them to do that.”

When it comes to her personal history, however, Ephriam is circumspect, saying only that her 23-year marriage to a drug rehabilitation counselor ended five years ago because “it wasn’t a good match.”

But for all her close encounters with divorce, Ephriam says she’s still a strong believer in marriage.

“I think it’s wonderful. And I hope to do it again sometime soon. I’m not jaded. When you’re married, you have a partner, a friend, someone to talk to, to laugh with, to share your joys, your disappointments, your fears, your successes, all of that. It keeps you from running around in the streets. It’s just good.”

Irene Lacher can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].