COURTING JUSTICE: FROM NY YANKEES v. MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TO BUSH v. GORE, 1997-2000, by David Boies, Miramax, 490 pages, $25.95.
Ordinarily, we expect a lawyer to speak "legalese" that the rest of us have little chance of interpreting. But "Courting Justice," by David Boies, is a charming, clearly-written book about some of his more famous cases.
Most readers will have little difficulty understanding the issues involved, and Boies' wit is ever present as a corrective, just as it is in the courtroom.
Called by the New York Times "the lawyer everyone wants," Boies has been unusually famous because of his easy command of difficult issues. During the Bush v. Gore struggle in 2000, he appeared regularly on television, clearly explaining the intricacies and complexities of Florida law and the recount of the presidential election.
But Boies did not start out to be a lawyer. After falling in love with his high school debate partner, he married her following graduation and he went to work on a construction crew. His wife, Caryl Elwell, thought he wasn't fully using his talents, so she encouraged him to go to college.
In spite of his constant battle with dyslexia, Boies enrolled at the University of Redlands in California and performed well academically in journalism and debate. After three years, when he realized he had time to kill, he decided to transfer to a law school without graduating. He chose Northwestern University, then moved the family from California to Illinois.
While Boies was being intellectually stimulated, his wife was unhappy with her isolation in a state she didn't like, and she was feeling left out of her husband's intellectual life. So she took their two kids and moved back to California, a decision that led to their divorce.
In the meantime, Boies became interested in "the smartest and most attractive woman" in his law class. The only problem was, she was married to his evidences professor. After several months, the dean offered to help them both transfer to other law schools — she to Columbia and he to Yale, which put them a short train ride apart. Eventually, they divorced their spouses and were married.
Boies was grateful for the opportunity to attend Yale, as it gave him intellectual excitement he had never experienced elsewhere. Soon, the newly married couple had twin sons. When they finished their respective law schools, he joined her in New York to work for a prominent law firm where he stayed for 30 years. He founded his own firm four years ago. But he and Judy were divorced in 1972.
In 1977, while taking leave from his practice to work with Sen. Ted Kennedy on a trucking and deregulation matter, he met Mary McInnis Schuman, a young, attractive lawyer. They dated for several years and finally married in 1982. Together they had two more children, making Boies the father of six — two from each wife. This most recent marriage has been happy and stable, and three of his children now work as lawyers for Boies' firm.
With regard to his practice, Boies asserts that "The clients I choose to represent tend to be those who care as much about winning as I do and are willing to work at it as hard."
One especially high-profile case pitted George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees against Major League Baseball, a case involving the principle of revenue-sharing between the professional teams, meaning the more successful teams would be forced to subsidize the less successful.
Needless to say, Boies won the case, a feather in the cap of his new law firm. He joked that just as Babe Ruth had built the Yankees, he also had a hand in building Boies' firm.
All the cases Boies describes are unfailingly interesting — with the Bush v. Gore case taking the prize. Boies found the case completely unpredictable from one day to the next, right up to the U.S. Supreme Court establishing a unique precedent by taking a case involving a presidential election and by stopping the recount of votes in Florida.
This book offers a rare view inside the intellect of an unusually accomplished man.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com