Reflections of a Boston Lawyer

I came to Boston at the beginning of my career to serve a one-year term as law clerk to a United States District Judge.  One benefit of district court clerkships is that you get to see and work on civil and criminal trials and pretrial proceedings.  Several of our cases were covered by the press.  After my clerkship, I worked on other matters that received media attention of various degrees, ranging from cases that received only a few seconds in a news broadcast, to cases that covered the front pages of our major newspapers, to a case that became the subject of a best-selling book and major motion picture. During the year of my clerkship, I quickly learned a lesson that was reinforced throughout my career, namely, that unless you are in the courtroom, listening to the witnesses' testimony, observing their demeanor, studying the physical evidence and reading the documentary evidence, you will not be able to form an accurate judgment about the case.  No matter how objective reporte