Inherit the mint; how Edward Bennett Williams made legal prostitution respectable - excerpt from 'The Man to See: Edward Bennett Williams - Legendary Trial Lawyer, Ultimate Insider

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1991 by Evan Thomas

Williams's logic was clever, but a little specious and self-serving. His speech, which became his stock reply to critics, smacks of the debating tricks taught at his alma matter, Holy Cross. Williams was arguing by inapposite analogy. Unlike lawyers who hold themselves out to criminal defendants, the doctor and the priest are not deliberately seeking money by helping the victims they chance upon, nor are they seeking to excuse the criminal acts of their patients/penitents. A priest has a duty to God; he cannot refuse a penitent. A lawyer, however, is not compelled to defend Joe McCarthy. The fact is that lawyers are not required to represent everyone who asks them to, and Williams himself often said so. He had a genuine sense of duty about the right to counsel, but it is fair to say that he was more interested in marketing himself and getting headlines than playing the Good Samaritan. He had little interest in cases that were unexceptional or uninteresting. He wanted cases that were notorious or lucrative--and preferably both.

With friends, Williams was gleeful about his notices. Frank Waldrop, the executive editor of the Washington Times Herald, remembers Williams lying, half drunk, on the floor of his house one night. "There are three things in life," Williams said. "Money, power, and public relations. My wife is rich, and I wouldn't know what to do with power, but give me those press clippings!"

By the sixties, Ed Williams's reputation as a trial lawyer was complete. He had nothing further to gain from astonishing victories in the courtroom, and he feared he had much to lose if he failed to live up to his reputation. Moreover, the guiltier the clients, the less sense it made to bring them before a jury. More and more, Williams turned to cutting deals with the prosecutor behind closed doors. This required access, a commodity most prized in Washington by the many seeking favors from the few, and it became increasingly important for Williams to cultivate and win over Washington insiders.

Though he continued to enjoy the company of scoundrels, his craving for respectability, his longing to belong, led him to climb toward loftier circles. In the sixties, Williams's ambition shifted from staging spectacular courtroom upsets to penetrating and then joining the Washington elite. Where once he was satisfied with fame, he now craved power.

Williams was in awe of Clark Clifford--the model of a private lawyer whose access and influence gave him real power. An invitation to Clifford's Christmas buffet was a more accurate indication of clout in the capital than membership in the Chevy Chase Club. Clifford understood that Ed Williams could be useful to him. Clifford preferred not to handle criminal matters, but his clients sometimes came to him clutching grand jury subpoenas. So Clifford began sending them down the street to Williams.

Williams was, in Clifford's estimation, a shrewed judge of character with a knack for solving problems. Increasingly, when Clifford wanted to chew over a difficult question, he gave Williams a call. Clifford flattered Williams: "How's my lawyer?" he would ask in his sikly, mellifluous voice. Williams, in turn, shamelessly flattered Clifford. "I'm still young enough in spirit to have living heroes, two of them, and you're one," Williams wrote Clifford in the summer of 1967.