In Zuckerman's Vengeance Is Mine (MacMillan) the author wrote “Goldberg held a reputation as the city's best and brightest trial lawyer. He had mastered a style of cross-examination that left witnesses gasping for breath; he had an energetic, courtly manner with a jury and a style of summation of such eloquent fury that one could almost lose sight of anything his opponent had proven.”

In Prof. Seidemann’s book: In The Interest of Justice: Great Opening and Closing Arguments of the Last 100 Years (Harper Collins) two of the twenty courtroom arguments selected are those of Goldberg. The book has been described as “America's greatest courtroom speeches beginning with the Scopes trial and the summation of Clarence Darrow.”

Goldfarb, in his book Perfect Villains and Imperfect Heroes (Random House) wrote, “of all the hotshots in Kennedy's Justice Department, Jay Goldberg was probably the hottest.” With the same assessment: Navasky, Kennedy Justice (Atheneum); Heymann, R.F.K. (Dutton); Hersch, The Battle Between Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover and the Controversy That Changed the Face of Criminal Law in the United States (Basic Books).

Working as his then student assistant, Charles Rangel, thereafter a Member of Congress, wrote: “It was indeed my good fortune that District Attorney Hogan assigned me to you. You provided me with my first real experience in the law. What I learned while working for you has stayed with me all these years.”

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At the Association of the Bar, City of New York he delivered a lecture entitled by others “Giant of the Trial Bar.”

He was profiled on Robin Leach's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in a segment entitled “Toughest Lawyer in Town.”