Despite his superstar reputation as the nation's hottest lawyer, David Boies seems anything but pretentious.
Chuckling during a telephone interview from Miami, Boies attributed his fame to "a series of unplanned events."
Yeah, right — like defending George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees or taking on Bill Gates and the computer giant, Microsoft. He has also defended Calvin Klein, Don Imus and Garry Shandling and has been an advocate for such companies as CBS, DuPont and American Express. He also defended Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election-recount frenzy in Florida.
He's done all this and much, much more , and has written about it in "Courting Justice," an entertaining and lively book chronicling some of his high-profile cases.
Boies is especially respected among his peers for his astronomical intelligence. "Three or four years ago, a reporter said that 'two people have photographic memories, the pope and David Boies.' I don't know about the pope, but I certainly don't have a photographic memory. I have a good memory, but I can't read something and remember it word for word. I can't remotely do that."
Boies said he simply focuses on those things he considers important and remembers them, so he can use them later in arguing a case. In fact, he says dyslexia was a major problem in his youth. Growing up in rural Illinois, he was not able to read until the third grade. "Dyslexia stays with you. It affects my reading speed today — but since I read less than I did when I was in school, it's not as serious a problem. My experience is that dyslexia and intelligence are not related to each other."
As a result, Boies was educated at the University of Redlands, Northwestern and Yale. He spent 30 years with the firm of Cravath, Swaine and Moore before leaving four years ago to found his own firm, Boies, Schiller and Flexner. He has rarely lost a case and has never had a victory reversed on appeal.
A resident of Westchester, N.Y., Boies lives with his third wife, Mary, also a lawyer. He has six children and is interested in spending more time now with them and his grandchildren. He's a man with simple tastes, and worries little about either food or clothes, thus attaining a reputation for frumpy suits and black tennis shoes.
Boies finds the practice of law exciting, and he looks for variety in his clients. "It gives you insight into vastly different issues and businesses, but you approach the legal questions with freshness."
He also feels that "brilliant trial maneuvers" are not as crucial to success as preparation. "You may see a lawyer think on his feet, but you don't see his preparation. Our justice system does well when the legal opponents and their resources are evenly matched. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case."
Boies wrote his book in longhand, using a loose-leaf notebook in his spare time — meaning on airplanes, waiting in the doctor's office, on the beach during vacations. "I never wrote more than 1,000 words a day, but since every lawyer likes to talk about his cases, I found the writing pretty easy. I thought I was being concise. When I finished, I had 225,000 words, and my editor cut it to 160,000 words — without losing anything."
In the book, Boies tries to give perspective to his most exciting cases, and he outlines "what goes on behind the scenes, how we made choices and what the consequences were."
Although he lost the case in court, Boies is especially grateful for the opportunity to defend Al Gore's recount battle in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. "It was exceptional to be involved in such a historic matter, with a front-row seat. If I hadn't become a lawyer I would have been a history teacher, anyway, like my father."
He calls the Bush v. Gore case, which he handled pro bono, "a 30-day whirlwind — I'd wake up in the morning and literally not know what was going to happen that day. It was the first time in American history that the U.S. Supreme Court ever intervened in a presidential election, and the first time the Court ever ruled that the votes in an election not be counted."
While Boies was disappointed with the Supreme Court's intervention in the Gore case, he believes it was "an aberration," and that, for the most part, highly-qualified people sit on the court. "We give our final authority to our least democratic institution, so they can make important decisions without being subject to political whims."
Boies was duly impressed with the separate "classy" dissents written in the case by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Stevens. "In the long run, it is the dissents that people remember. They are quoted in high-profile cases, in which by today's standards the majority is considered wrong. Dissents hold up much better under the spotlight of history."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com