Malice Aforethought: How Lawyers Use Our Secret Rules to Get Rich, Get Sex, Get Even-- And Get Away with It

Those who doggedly respect the legal profession will probably find their faith shaken by this devastating expose; the cynical reader will only grow more cynical still. Marston, a Philadelphia attorney ( Inside Hoover's FBI ), establishes at the outset that he is writing about only a few ``Bad Laywers,'' but he convinces us that they are the tip of an iceberg. Greed, asserts Marston, motivates many of the 750,000 attorneys in this country; they have been known to appropriate their clients' money, withhold information about crimes, commit perjury and demand sex as part of their fees. The profession's self-policing, he argues, is a joke: lawyers convicted of felonies are not always disbarred. After presenting an excoriating analysis, the author makes suggestions for reform--but holds out almost no hope that these will be heeded. Author tour. (Mar.)