The nation's capital is always awash in political and legal turmoil but never so much so as in the past four decades. From the Kennedy assassination to Watergate, from the Keating 5 to Monica Lewinsky, it's been an ideal place to work if you're a journalist and a highly profitable place to work if you're a lawyer. And no attorney has been closer to the action than Robert S. Bennett.
Bennett organizes In The Ring -- The Trials of a Washington Lawyer as he would a lawsuit he's trying. He marshals his facts tightly, recognizing that readers -- like jurors -- are prone to lose interest easily. He stirs in a dash of self-deprecation, just to show his humanity, but not enough to challenge the notion that he's the best in town. And he's at his best when reproducing spell-binding cross examinations of expert witnesses, usually destroying them with surgical precision rather than by bloody bludgeoning. Any veteran trial lawyer will tell you, over a couple of Wild Turkeys, that he's made tactical errors that have lost him cases in his time, but this book is for the ages, so don't expect Bob Bennett to let his hair down quite that far.
Bennett recounts his Brooklyn boyhood as an amateur boxer, his legal tutelage under FDR adviser Tommy (the Cork) Corcoran ("the smartest man I ever met"), and his defense of such figures as former Secretaries of Defense Clark Clifford and Caspar Weinberger, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, the Keating 5, and President Bill Clinton. He prides himself that his clients have come from both sides of the aisle. And while many have led dysfunctional lives, Bennett remains married to the love of his life, Ellen, who has borne him three adored daughters.
