The Criminal Defense Lawyer as a Hero

ARE lawyers taking over the world? Or has a subtle and insidious silent coup already occurred?

Practicing Orange County criminal defense lawyers, as well as serious paranoics, need only point to the inexorable rise of a man named David E. Kelley, at 40 one of the most influential figures in American popular culture.

Only 10 years ago Mr. Kelley was a young Boston attorney, scribbling away at motions and appellate briefs and billing by the hour. Today he is a top-of-the-heap network television producer with several hundred hours of prime time drama behind him; a very rich man married to a famous movie star.

What's more, he has ambitious plans to make a hero out of a criminal defense attorney -- a job classification that many post-O.J. Simpson television viewers would file in the same moral pigeonhole as, say, soldier of fortune, chop shop operator, dognaper-for-hire, and journalist.