Master of the Impossible

By Cathy Booth Thomas/Tallahassee

Between the hectoring voice of James Baker and the monotone of Warren Christopher, David Boies cheerfully made the Democratic case to the TV crews. In a crisis atmosphere, he gave off an aura of confidence that somehow the system would work--not in weeks but in days. As he earnestly told a Russian TV reporter one night, "This doesn't happen very often here in this country. It's not a question of legal maneuvering. And it ought not to be a question of politics. It's a question of whom did the voters want." The Russian walked off, nodding in agreement. Now Boies has to convince the courts and the court of public opinion.

This is the guy who embarrassed Bill Gates on the stand. The guy who wrestled $1.17 billion from drug companies for fixing vitamin prices, who defeated the nation's biggest auction houses and now represents everyone from Calvin Klein to Napster. Yeah, the guy in the rumpled blue suit and black sneakers.

Boies' appearance has become a standing joke, even if the suits these days are Lands' End, not Sears. But the easygoing exterior can't disguise the relentless Yale Law School mind for long. In the past three decades, Boies, 59, has lost just one major trial. And he doesn't plan to lose this contest. A few hours before filing the Democratic brief, Boies told TIME, "It's always simple when you have right on your side." He and a team of about 20 lawyers toiled for 30 hours to put together that brief, working out of a Tallahassee law office so cramped the kitchen became a war room.

Boies' Yale classmate Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. Solicitor General, wrangled him into leading the Democratic team of lawyers in Tallahassee. "I called David at 4 p.m. the Monday after the election. By noon Tuesday, he was speaking on complex matters of Florida election law."

Boies is used to cramming. He has struggled with dyslexia since childhood, and memorizes every detail to avoid having to read anything twice. A few days before Thanksgiving 1986, he was recruited to perform one of his most dramatic saves: appealing a jury verdict that assessed Texaco $10.6 billion for busting up the acquisition of Getty by Pennzoil. At the time, he had been tending to his dying mother in Fullerton, Calif. By Dec. 3, he had mastered 30,000 pages of the original trial transcript, and for the duration of the appeal he split his time between federal court in Washington and his mother's bedside. "A large lawsuit is a little bit like a war," he told TIME then. "Logistics plays a critical role. And when it's over, the people who've won are heroes. Those who've lost are terrible."

Boies has had other voting-rights cases. In 1986 he got an injunction suspending the Republican National Committee's so-called ballot-security program, which targeted black votes. In Florida the tricky part for Boies will be keeping the public behind the Democrats. Jonathan Schiller, his longtime colleague and partner for the past three years, says Boies has no doubt devised a strategy that anticipates appeals and parallel legal proceedings while recognizing the psychology of the situation. "People need to leave feeling upbeat about the transition," says Schiller.

Boies used to enjoy many a weekend at the craps table, owns an 86-ft. sailboat and maintains a wine cellar. But family is big with him. Literally. He has six children from three marriages and takes the kids on cross-country drives in a Jeep Wrangler every few years. Three of his adult offspring work with him at his law firm. He rode to the rescue of Napster after his kids told him how cool it was. Says his wife Mary, a busy antitrust lawyer: "We talked about forming a firm together but decided we preferred romance." She's clearly a fan. Seeing him in the courtroom, she says, is like seeing "Baryshnikov at the ballet."

--By Cathy Booth Thomas/Tallahassee