In the Ring: The Trials of a Washington Lawyer

Important people caught in a jam—Bill Clinton embroiled in the Paula Jones lawsuit, Judith Miller facing jail time for contempt, Paul Wolfowitz battling ethics charges at the World Bank—often hire superlawyer Bennett to represent them. In this self-satisfied memoir, Bennett (a partner at the white-shoe firm Skadden, Arps) pays effusive tribute to friends and colleagues, proffers nuggets of wisdom to young attorneys (“While you should overprepare your cases, you should always under try them,” i.e., keep the presentation simple) and ferociously defends his clients’ reputations in rehashes of their cases. But his most zealous advocacy is for his brilliant lawyering, evidenced by courtroom proceedings that the author excerpts at great length. Alas, in print, lawyerly histrionics become rambling, turgid improvisations that try the reader’s patience: “Your Honor, I don’t look like Alice [in Wonderland]... but I somehow feel like I am. I’m perplexed as she was. I’m concerned as she was. There are things that just don’t fit together for me.” What does come through is the preening self-regard (“Had I been younger and less experienced, I might have been intimidated meeting one on one with the president”) of an archetypal Washington mover-and-shaker. (Feb.)