Could a case be made that the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States should be disbarred?

The question has emerged in the wake of what many consider to be damaging testimony by Monica Goodling, Mr. Gonzales’ senior counselor and the Justice Department’s White House liaison, before the House Judiciary Committee on May 23.

Ms. Goodling described a meeting in March where Mr. Gonzales said to her: “Let me tell you what I can remember,” and “laid out his general recollection” that the firings of the prosecutors had been performance-related. At his own appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in April, Mr. Gonzales told the panel that “I haven’t talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations.”

“It depends crucially on what the facts are,” said David Luban, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. “Given the most unfavorable interpretation, there’s clearly a case for disbarment.”

Bar-association rules, which are established by state associations—Mr. Gonzales is licensed in the state of Texas in addition to being admitted to the Supreme Court bar—typically forbid “conduct that involves deceit, fraud or misrepresentation.” There are also various means of censuring lawyers for bad behavior that fall short of disbarment, such as a public reprimand.

“Lawyers are not allowed to lie,” said Nancy Rapoport, an ethics expert and the former dean of the University of Houston Law Center. “That one, everyone agrees on.”

Geoffrey Hazard Jr., a legal ethicist who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said that Mr. Gonzales’ faulty memory raises questions, but that the professional consequences remain uncertain. “She said she was there at a meeting he was there at talking about this subject,” said Mr. Hazard, referring to Ms. Goodling. “He says he doesn’t recall. A lot of people would think it’s just not possible not to recall that. If you say it’s not possible not to recall, then the inference is that his statement was not truthful. Like saying you don’t remember being at your birthday party last fall.”

Of course, as nearly all of the experts interviewed for this article pointed out, it is entirely possible that the impact of Ms. Goodling’s testimony will be political, but not legal.

“The fact that Goodling recollects differently from Gonzales—who has himself been vague and inconsistent—does not create a perjury prosecution of either of them,” Stephen Gillers, a legal ethicist at N.Y.U. Law School, wrote in an e-mail. “People recall differently. Until we learn more—if we learn more—it would not be responsible to say that inconsistency means Gonzales committed perjury.”

The experts also varied in their opinions on whether his home-state bar association might ever be moved by a formal complaint by a fellow attorney—a necessary step towards disbarment—to act against Mr. Gonzales, who was a board director for the State Bar of Texas from 1991 to 1994.

“The state-bar associations are never going to take the lead unless Congress does something,” said Charles Silver, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s not like it was with President Clinton.”

(Because he lied when testifying about the Monica Lewinsky affair, Mr. Clinton’s Arkansas law license was suspended for five years from the time he stepped down as President.)

“A lot depends on how things play out,” said Mr. Silver.

“It’s possible—I don’t think it’s probable,” said Ms. Rapoport. “Any lawyer is allowed to rat on another lawyer for a serious violation of the ethics rules. But you have to know that the person did it. You know how lawyers get about knowing: ‘I have a belief that he might have, but I don’t really know.’”

For now, Mr. Gonzales isn’t conceding any wrongdoing.

“After several hours of testimony last week by Monica Goodling, more than 6,800 pages and an additional 1,500 pages made available to Congress, two extensive public hearings with the Attorney General, and many hours of interviews and testimony from senior Department of Justice officials,” said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, “it remains clear that the Attorney General did not ask for the resignation of any individual in order to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain.”

Of course, with a no-confidence vote on Mr. Gonzales planned for next month in the Senate and the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter, predicting that Mr. Gonzales would resign before then, the status of Mr. Gonzales’ law license may be the least of his problems.

In gripping testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, former Justice Department official James Comey described a standoff in the hospital room of then–Attorney General John Ashcroft. President Bush was seeking the reauthorization of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program. Mr. Comey, then the acting Attorney General, had already refused to recertify the program because of concerns about its legality. But according to Mr. Comey, Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had raced to Mr. Ashcroft’s bedside to circumvent the department’s ruling.

For Mr. Gillers, this was an obvious example of obstruction of justice, a crime also forbidden by D.C. bar regulations. In his view, the Department of Justice had already deemed the program illegal. “By seeking to advance an illegal scheme with the advantage of D.O.J. approval,” he wrote, “Gonzales seriously interfered with the administration of justice.”

Meanwhile, the debate continues. “What I’m seeing is two people, they’re all in the executive branch, they’re talking, they’re not threatening, they can disagree with each other, they both report to the President,” said Ms. Rapoport of Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Gonzales. “I don’t see obstruction here.”

But for two American-Jewish dynasties who covet control of the World Jewish Congress, the Bronfmans and the Lauders, Monday, May 7, will go down as the day that saw one family’s ambitions collapse in a heap, while another’s rose to heady new possibilities.

In the late hours of Monday morning, in a modern office in the sleek Seagram Building, Edgar Bronfman Sr., 77, announced that he was resigning as president of the W.J.C., a venerable organization whose tiny and relatively modest American presence belies its hefty international clout. For 71 years, it has defined itself as “the representative body” of the Jewish people, a federation fighting anti-Semitism and the last ravages of the Holocaust (it pioneered the restitution fight against the Swiss banks). And while its profile has been on the wane of late, its historic reputation—and the entrée it provides its leaders to presidents, popes and kings—has made it a coveted perch for a certain brand of billionaire.

That was certainly the case with Mr. Bronfman, who has been all but synonymous with the organization since taking charge in 1979. During his nearly three decades at the helm, he has hopscotched the globe in the name of world Jewry, earning himself the semi-serious nickname “the king of the Jews.” Until recently, he had dreamed of passing the title on to his son, Matthew.

But with his resignation—which came after months of such acrimonious infighting that at least one member had called for Mr. Bronfman to step down—his hopes for passing the crown to his son faltered, and the ambitions of another younger son, Ronald Lauder, were resurrected.

As of press time, Mr. Lauder had not formally declared his candidacy. But sources close to the cosmetics company heir say that he is actively considering a bid, reigniting a hope he harbored years ago of becoming the head of the fractious organization.

“He has a track record of leading important American Jewish organizations and doing so successfully and with distinction,” said Isi Leibler, a Bronfman critic who is encouraging Mr. Lauder to stand for the presidency.

Like other Lauder supporters, Mr. Leibler sees a potential Lauder presidency as a marked departure from the Bronfman model, a chance to lead the organization in ways that Matthew—had he been given the chance—never could.

Yet some observers wonder whether the two heirs are so different after all: Both are scions of some of the world’s most powerful Jewish families, both younger sons who have eschewed—or were perhaps passed over for—leadership positions in the family business. Instead, they have chosen to carve out positions in the world of philanthropy and Jewry, taking on a range of causes that have earned them praise from some quarters and charges of dilettantism from others.

At 63, Mr. Lauder is the better known of the two, a voracious art collector and serial board chairman who has used his ample resources to shape Jewish affairs, particularly in Israel and Eastern Europe. Tall and expensively dressed (he always wears suits, even in Israel, according to a New Yorker profile), he has managed to parlay his philanthropy into power, erasing some of the disappointments of his earlier life (most notably a costly bid for the Mayoralty in 1989).

Indeed, his unrequited desire to lead the W.J.C. notwithstanding, he has previously headed some of the world’s heavyweight Jewish organizations—from the Jewish National Fund to the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Among the most common comments made to The Observer by his acquaintances was the following: He is smarter than people think.

The younger Mr. Bronfman, an investor by trade, is still struggling for that recognition. At 47 years of age, his Jewish leadership credentials are limited to a stint as W.J.C. finance chairman and several years as chairman of the 92nd Street Y. In addition to the attention that comes with being born into an immensely wealthy family, he has received publicity for undergoing two rather public divorces, and he made headlines when he resigned from the board of the Israel Discount Bank. (He stepped down in April after a member of the bank’s board launched an investigation into whether he had used his position at the bank to advance his own interests. The report has not been made public, but according to an account in Crain’s, it did not come to any conclusions about Matthew’s activities.)

A Soap Opera Storyline

The story of the fall of Bronfman—and the potential rise of Lauder—is the culmination of nearly three years of internecine struggles within the W.J.C.: of ancient friendships shattered, loyalties betrayed, finances mismanaged and enough high drama to fill an afternoon soap opera. The only difference, perhaps, is that the characters in this drama just happen to include Bronfmans, Lauders and a former fix-it man for Donald Rumsfeld, rather than Quartermaines and Cassadines.

The tale begins in 2004. At the time, the organization—which had been led by the elder Bronfman and his trusted ally, Rabbi Israel Singer, for some 25 years—was still coasting on its role in leading the restitution effort that had returned billions of dollars to Holocaust survivors. But in August of that year, Mr. Leibler, then the senior vice president of the W.J.C., raised allegations of serious financial mismanagement within the organization: He complained that the Bronfman-Singer duo had run the World Jewish Congress like their own “private fiefdom” and demanded an explanation for $1.2 million in funds that had been transferred to a Swiss bank account controlled by Mr. Singer. (The organization’s annual budget hovers around $10 million, according to newspaper accounts.)

Mr. Leibler’s claims led to a torrent of charges and countercharges, as well as an investigation by the office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. (The investigation, which was completed in 2006, concluded that the organization “lacked appropriate financial controls” and “failed to keep adequate records regarding their fund-raising activities,” but found no criminal conduct. The organization agreed to adopt stricter governance and accounting policies, and Mr. Singer was given a new, non-fiduciary role.)

To help reassert control over the organization, Mr. Bronfman brought in Stephen Herbits, his deputy back in the days when he was still running the Seagram Company and, more recently, a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld at the U.S. Department of Defense. For an initial salary of $420,000 a year (it was eventually lowered), he was charged with bringing his notorious pit-bull style to bear toward bringing the organization, and its finances, back in line.

But the enforced calm, if there ever was any, was fleeting. In recent months, the tensions bubbled over: The organization’s Israeli branch went to battle with Mr. Herbits over what they considered to be his autocratic management style; in March, Mr. Bronfman unilaterally fired Mr. Singer, sparking additional accusations of a Bronfman-Herbits autocracy; and throughout, frustration continued to build over Matthew’s aggressive presidential campaign.

When an explosive strategy memo, allegedly written by Mr. Herbits to Matthew, surfaced in The Jerusalem Post late last week, critics’ worst fears about the Bronfmans’ determination to maintain control of the organization wer
e confirmed.

“There is no doubt in my mind, drawing on all my various backgrounds, that you have what it takes to be a great leader of the Jewish people,” Mr. Herbits wrote in the Nov. 16, 2006, memo laying out how Matthew might go about vanquishing his opponents and winning the presidential prize. “As with your father, you will get better and better over time.”

This was not a universal opinion, however. For all the power of the Bronfman name, the young liquor heir was not an obvious future leader of the Jewish people. Nonetheless, armed with his Bronfman pedigree, Matthew began pressing to take control of the W.J.C.

“Matthew talked with me very openly about it,” Shai Hermesh, a member of both the Israeli Knesset and the W.J.C. steering committee, told The Observer several days before the committee’s meeting. “But I told Matthew that the World Jewish Congress is a democratic organization.”

The Bronfmans seem to have been well aware of the hurdles they might face in convincing the putatively meritocratic W.J.C. to accept a legacy candidate as their leader. In the Nov. 16 strategy memo, Mr. Herbits identified the dynasty factor as one of the chief reasons that Pierre Besnainou, leader of the European Jewish Congress, opposed Matthew’s presidential bid.

“He believes that the image of ‘dynasty’ is not appropriate for such an organization,” Mr. Herbits quoted the Tunisian-born leader as saying—and then proceeded to analyze how the Bronfmans should approach le problème Besnainou.

“He is French. Don’t discount this. He cannot be trusted,” Mr. Herbits advised. And then: “He is Tunisian. Do not discount this either. He works like an Arab.”

In one section of the document, Mr. Herbits quite bluntly suggests “an infusion of cash—say $5 million” from Matthew’s father, uncle Charles Bronfman, and siblings and friends to serve as a “transition vote of confidence” in the heir. “You would, of course, have to make a substantial gift yourself,” he reminds the candidate.

Another section of the document is titled, quite simply, “Engage, fight and win”—a clear reminder of the author’s Pentagon roots.

(Mr. Herbits didn’t respond to calls for comment. Mr. Besnainou told The Observer that he received an apology from Mr. Herbits at Monday’s meeting.)

The now-infamous memo, combined with his father’s resignation, have all but assured that Matthew won’t be running for W.J.C. president anytime soon. But in his absence, one candidate, a South African steel magnate named Mendel Kaplan, has already surfaced; Mr. Lauder could be a second. An election will be held in New York on June 10.

Mr. Lauder first took on a prominent role in the W.J.C. in the mid-1990’s, when the organization decided to expand its restitution campaign to include art stolen from Jews during World War II. Mr. Lauder—an aggressive art collector who made his first purchases with his bar-mitzvah money—chaired the newly created Commission for Art Recovery, overseeing the auction of plundered artwork that had gone unclaimed.

It seemed like the perfect assignment for Mr. Lauder, but there were complications. At that time, he also chaired the board of the Museum of Modern Art, an appointment that put him in an awkward position in leading the crusade to return looted artwork. In one high-profile instance, Mr. Lauder presided over an exhibition of work by an Austrian collector whose acquisition tactics were being challenged. Mr. Lauder sided with the museum—against the families.

According to several sources, Mr. Lauder first expressed interest in the W.J.C.’s top post more than five years ago, around the time Mr. Bronfman indicated for the first time that he might resign.

At the time, Mr. Lauder was serving as the W.J.C.’s treasurer. But then his interest seemed to wane—a change of heart that has inspired various theories. One theory is that he was frustrated by limited access to the organization’s financial records; the other view is that his bid was quashed by Mr. Bronfman in private, and then painfully in public.

In an article in The New York Times in January 2002, Edgar dismissed Mr. Lauder’s prospects. “He’s not a serious contender at this point in time—at least I don’t think he is,” Mr. Bronfman said. “But I can’t tell him what to do and what not to do.”

Among other things, Mr. Lauder, who is a close supporter of Likud hawk Benjamin Netanyahu and patron of the conservative Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem, and Mr. Bronfman, who is an ally of the dovish former Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, hold politically divergent views on Israeli matters.

A special assistant to Mr. Lauder, Warren Kozak, said that Mr. Lauder hadn’t made a decision yet about running. But given the reports that some on the board are already throwing their weight behind Mr. Kaplan, who is currently the chairman of the W.J.C., Mr. Lauder’s spokesman seemed to want to keep his boss’ foot in the door. “There should be fair, open elections, after all that has gone on,” Mr. Kozak said.

Still, it was perhaps the candidate himself who spoke most revealingly about his intentions.

This January, as news circulated that Mr. Bronfman was preparing to resign for real, Mr. Lauder’s friends pushed him to run, and his interest in the position swelled. He told Page Six: “This is not a monarchy. This is not something you can just hand over to your son, and say, ‘Here it is.’”

Now, just as the organization’s steering committee meets today to discuss the organization’s future leadership, an explosive memo outlining plans for Mr. Bronfman’s second son Matthew to take control has surfaced, promising yet another episode of in-fighting and scandal.

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Observer and which was written about in the Jerusalem Post on Friday, was written by Stephen Herbits, the Congress’s secretary general and therefore a supposedly impartial player in the organization. However, Mr. Herbits is also a longtime advisor to Edgar Bronfman Sr., a trusted deputy with an unforgiving reputation who worked for him at the Seagram Company. He took a break from Bronfman-duty to serve as an assistant to Donald Rumsfeld during his first term as secretary of defense – a position in which he further burnished his reputation as a hard-charging “fixer” – but returned to Edgar Sr.’s side in 2004. His ostensible role was to bring the World Jewish Congress back to a place of transparent, good-governance, but as the memo makes clear, at least part of his energy during the last few months has been devoted to maneuvering Bronfman heir Matthew to the top of the organization.

Mr. Bronfman’s potential rivals for the chairmanship of the WJC include cosmetics billionaire Ron Lauder and Mendel Kaplan, a South African steel magnate.

“There is no doubt in my mind, drawing on all my various backgrounds, that you have what it takes to be a great leader of the Jewish people,” Mr. Herbits wrote in the November 16, 2006 memo to Matthew, who is 47. “As with your father, you will get better and better over time. But it will take some time, some practice, and some greater devotion in the early years to meeting preparation and policy development. This goes to time availability, of course; but also a willingness to see out experts, listen, learn and incorporate. All easily doable, but nonetheless required.”

Mr. Herbits did not immediately return a call for comment, nor did another WJC official, Pinchas Shapiro.

The memo is essentially a strategy document for dealing with one of the most vocal opponents of Matthew’s presidential bid, a French-Tunisian leader of the European Jewish community named Pierre Besnainou. It opens by recounting some of Mr. Besnainou’s stated reasons for opposing the Bronfman candidacy - “He believes that the image of ‘dynasty’ is not appropriate for such an organization,” Mr. Herbits writes – but then quickly proceeds to characterize <le probleme Besnainou> in unflattering terms.

“He is French. Don’t discount this. He cannot be trusted,” Mr. Herbits advised.

Also: “He is Tunisian. Do not discount this either. He works like an Arab.”

The memo makes it sensationally clear what assets the Bronfmans would have at their disposal in their mini-campaign for the WJC leadership: money, connections and of course Mr. Herbits would all be deployed to assure Matthew the presidency.

In one section of the document, Mr. Herbits quite bluntly suggests “an infusion of cash – say $5 million” from Matthew’s father, uncle Charles Bronfman, siblings and friends to serve as a “‘transition vote of confidence’” in the heir. “You would, of course, have to make a substantial gift yourself,” he reminds the candidate.

In another section, he assures Matthew that, despite his opponent Pierre Besnainou’s apparent friendship with Israeli statesman Shimon Peres, he will be able to count on the Israeli leader’s support, thanks once again to “Charles and Edgar” and their long history with Peres. And in a clear nod to his Pentagon past, Mr. Herbits even outlines a strategy for fending off Besnainou titled, “Engage, fight and win” – a plan that includes using Edgar to “call in some ‘chits’” and “being sure enough of the results to avoid an election.”

Beyond the section on dealing with Mr. Besnainou, Mr. Herbits also dedicates a full paragraph to outlining how Matthew can deal with “the Liebler factor” – a reference to Isi Liebler, a longtime Bronfman nemesis and the man whose allegations of corruption sent the WJC into its three-year downward spiral.

Mr. Herbits dedicates five paragraphs, headlined “Singer’s role,” to dealing with Israel Singer, the fallen former leader of the World Jewish Congress who served as Edgar Sr.’s consigliere until the elder Bronfman fired him in March. (Singer was at the center of the Attorney General’s investigation into financial mismanagement at the Congress). In the section, he speculates that Mr. Singer, who still played a prominent role in the organization at the time, may not have been fully supportive of Matthew’s rise to president and concludes: “This is a subject that Edgar will need to put on the table with Singer at some point.”

Mr. Bronfman’s candidacy had already taken several hits in recent weeks, most notably in the form his forced resignation from the board of Israel Discount Bank following an investigation into whether he had used his position at the bank to advance his own interests. The memo may finally put an end to the possibility of the heir inheriting his father’s throne.

Obama was apparently looking to make the most of his time in New York as the suggested donation was $2,300 -- the most a single contributor can give towards the primary race.

Obama spoke on a podium for about 20 minutes before taking some questions from the crowd, which included some hedge fund heavy hitters and present and former Goldman Sachs executives.

When asked about the situation in the Middle East, according to the attendee, Obama said both the Israeli and Palestinian governments could do with some new leadership. He pointed out that the Israeli Prime Minister had been significantly weakened, and that the Palestinian leadership had "failed" the Palestinian people.

He was also asked how he'd improve education. He stressed that teachers deserved more pay and respect, but that their unions could also benefit from reform.

And with so many hedge fund managers and bankers in the crowd, he was asked about tax policy. He told the crowd of wealthy (if liberally inclined) investors that he wants to roll back many of President Bush's tax cuts.

The letter thanked protesters who had appeared at a rally to condemn the accused students before they were found guilty in a court of law.

“It communicated to a fair-minded person in Durham that the people who taught these guys believed they were guilty,” he said.
Mr. Johnson’s posts, on an academic blog called Cleopatria, formed the seeds of a personal blog he then launched to cover the case.
Called Durham-in-Wonderland, over the past year it has become an influential source for those skeptical of the case against the students, two of whom thanked him personally when they were exonerated by the North Carolina Attorney general last week.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Johnson, 39, who usually appears in photographs Tucker Carlson-style in a bow-tie, wore jeans and a loose white shirt. Sitting on his desk in a 1950s-era building was a copy of The News & Observer’s issue the day after the announcement, which he has held on to because it shows one of the accused students cracking a rare smile.
(Mr. Johnson, who traveled to North Carolina 12 times to cover developments in the case, blogged live from the suite where the players and their lawyers watched the press conference.)

“When I got hired my clients said ‘You’ve got to read this guy--he knows all about this case,’” said James Cooney III, a lawyer representing one of the lacrosse players. “I was shaking my head saying, ‘The last thing I need is a history professor telling me how I run a legal case.’”

But before long the blog became his first read in the morning, and he used information obtained by Mr. Johnson to argue for a change of venue.

The original ad from the “Group of 88” was taken down from the Duke website, but Mr. Johnson had a still-working link. He also reported that a woman who would become a staffer on the District Attorney’s re-election campaign had called for a crowd to burn down the house where the alleged incident took place.

People in North Carolina started talking to me. I mean I’m a professor, not a reporter, but you know, the blog broke a few stories,” he said sheepishly. “This was not my intent when the thing started.”

More than 500 posts later, Mr. Johnson is co-writing a book on the affair with National Review writer Stuart Taylor, due out in September. He plans to continue his blog at least through the June ethics trial of District Attorney Michael Nifong for, among other things, withholding exculpatory DNA evidence from defense lawyers.

Prior to this Mr. Johnson was most famous for a tenure battle that he fought and won. Denied tenure in 2002, he challenged the basis for it, concluding that colleagues had voted against him because he had been deemed “uncollegial.” The Board of Trustees for the City University of New York reversed the decision.

It appears that at least some of Mr. Johnson’s own experience prepared him to come at this story with an academic’s insider perspective, and a questioning attititude toward what he calls “Academic Groupthink.”

“This is one of the darkest episodes in the history of American higher education,” said Mr. Johnson, referring to the letter signed by those 88 professors. “These were people who seemed to me to have betrayed the profession. They were supposed to stand up for due process and instead they went after their students.”

These are not great moments in lawyering, the kind that puts The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse on A1. This is “Lawyers Behaving Badly.”

Late on the afternoon of Jan. 31, approximately two weeks after filing a discrimination and retaliation lawsuit against Sullivan & Cromwell, fourth-year associate attorney Aaron Brett Charney sat in a carpeted meeting room at the Penn Club on 44th Street, discussing a settlement.

Representing Sullivan & Cromwell were firm partners David Braff and Gandolfo DiBlasi. Also there was Gera Grinberg, the senior associate with whom Mr. Charney had worked closely, in what everyone agrees was a productive professional relationship that Mr. Charney argued had prompted some of the harassment.

Accompanying Mr. Grinberg were his two lawyers, partners Steven Spielvogel and Edward Gallion of Gallion & Spielvogel.

Four days after that conversation, Mr. Charney boiled his home computer’s hard drive in hot water, attacked it with a hammer, boiled it again and then discarded the remains.

Sullivan & Cromwell argues that this action presents grounds for the dismissal of Mr. Charney’s suit.

But his lawyers respond that their client was frightened by threats from the powerful law firm and had interpreted talk about erasing his hard drive as a condition of settlement as an instruction.

As an example, Michael Kennedy, an attorney for Mr. Charney, described an alleged “rant” by Mr. DiBlasi.

“That rant said, ‘Sullivan & Cromwell is invincible.’ That rant says, ‘We defended the Nazis, and nobody can do anything or cared. We’ll crush you like a bug,’” Mr. Kennedy said, quoting his client’s recollections at a Feb. 22 hearing in the New York State Supreme Court. “Those aren’t settlement negotiations; those are threats.”

“He was so terrified, he would have done virtually anything,” Mr. Kennedy declared.

“His version of the Jan. 31 meeting is totally false,” said Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman Paul Caminiti.

The most recent hearing, on March 14, kept that meeting at the center of the case, when Mr. Kennedy requested the opportunity to depose three of the attendees: Mr. DiBlasi, Mr. Grinberg—who is on paid leave—and Mr. Gallion.

Mr. Kennedy returned to the question of Mr. Charney’s state of mind in destroying his hard drive.

“That really was the commencement of what was a very significant and protracted reign of terror,” he said, his tone insistently steady. “They have raised the issue, the specter of spoliation, and we need an opportunity and I think deserve an opportunity to be able to lay it to rest.”

“The suggestion by Mr. Kennedy is...just rhetoric but not reality,” Charles Stillman, a lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, coolly responded.

According to Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Grinberg was the only party at the Penn Club meeting permitted to take notes, and he gave them to Mr. Gallion for safekeeping. But Mr. Gallion then “destroyed” them.

Now there was destruction of evidence committed by another former Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer, Mr. Gallion—this time a document with specific, potentially exculpatory information.

According to sources, Mr. Grinberg first retained Mr. Spielvogel, who had been one of his professors, as his attorney in the matter; Mr. Spielvogel then brought in Mr. Gallion. As is common practice, Sullivan & Cromwell is paying Mr. Grinberg’s counsel fees.

“There was a meeting...and it should be very clear that it was Mr. Grinberg who selected Mr. Gallion to be his lawyer,” Mr. Stillman said in court, distancing the firm from Mr. Gallion. “A decade ago, Mr. Gallion had been an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.”

During the hearing, Mr. Kennedy was asked to explain why he couldn’t produce the notes to the meeting that his client, Mr. Charney, said he’d attended. Mr. Kennedy replied that Mr. Grinberg’s current lawyer, Gary Ireland, had informed him that they’d been destroyed.

Flustered, Mr. Ireland—who up to this point had been sitting in the gallery and taking his own notes—stood up and hustled to the podium to introduce himself. “It is my understanding from Mr. Gallion that [those notes] were destroyed,” he said, later adding: “They are the subject of the complaint before the Disciplinary Committee.”

Mr. Stillman interrupted, insisting that it was improper for Mr. Ireland to reveal such a matter. Justice Fried seemed to agree and called for a recess.

Exactly who is to blame for the continuing discussions over an initially confidential meeting depends at least in part on where you stand at counsel table.

The Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers used the hard drive destruction to raise questions about Mr. Charney’s judgment—especially since, as they pointed out, between the settlement talk and the hammering and boiling several days later, Mr. Charney had appeared before a judge, who advised him to treat all material related to the case “as if it were your own client’s confidential documents.”

For their part, Mr. Charney’s lawyers agree about the meeting’s significance. But what exactly Sullivan & Cromwell seeks on the hard drive hasn’t yet been articulated.

It appears that the ancillary litigation surrounding the circumstances of the settlement talk will continue to dominate the court proceedings.

Noting that Mr. Charney had retained counsel between the settlement talk and the destruction of his hard drive, Mr. Stillman informed the judge last week, “I will probably be coming back to you to examine his lawyers.”

If the number seemed exhausting to the Harvard Law School professor, it may not be George W. Bush that’s to blame.

“Keeping up with Hillary’s machine is not easy,” he said.

Mr. Tribe’s former research assistant, Barack Obama, is now the leading contender against Senator Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, and Mr. Tribe is working furiously on behalf of his favorite alumnus.

“Although I know and admire Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and have worked with both of them and would be happy to support each of them if they won the nomination,” Mr. Tribe said, “ … I’ve never been as enthusiastic about a politician as I am about Barack.”

And so, on March 20, Mr. Tribe will finally get to co-host a party for more than 150 guests, at the Cambridge home of his law-school colleague David Wilkins, that was originally scheduled for this past weekend—before what the tabloids have dubbed the Battle of Selma.

Several of Mr. Obama’s former professors are expected to welcome their prodigal son back to Cambridge for the event, an intimate, $2,300-a-head affair.

“He was not just another extremely bright student,” Mr. Tribe said. “He made a really major impact when he was here. He was charismatic, he was thoughtful, he was mature.”

Several Harvard Law School faculty members who got to know Mr. Obama before he graduated in 1991 have spent the last 20 years eagerly watching his star rise. The Presidential campaign has become a culmination of the old New England bastion’s affection for a favorite son.

And at this early date in the campaign, their favors are about more than Mr. Obama’s image, as they and their cohort scramble to meet the maximum donations to his war chest before a March 31 deadline, when all agree that the viability of his candidacy will really be determined.

His closest friends are reaching out to prominent alumni to get them to donate money and join the pro-Obama group of Harvard Law School graduates they are forming. Their stated goal is to create a base of fund-raisers, policy advisors, and—should the need arise—sharp-eyed poll-watchers well versed in the law.

“Barack is not the product of any political machine—he’s not a traditional establishment candidate by any means—so he doesn’t necessarily have those networks to draw on,” said Andrew Schapiro, one of the nascent effort’s masterminds. “But Harvard Law School is a pre-existing network that is in many ways an establishment structure, and one that can provide a lot of enthusiasm and assistance for his candidacy.”

Working the Ivy network has become an important part of Presidential campaign politics in recent years. The first time that Bill Clinton ran for office, he was buoyed by support from a similar group of more than 200 alumni of Yale Law School, including the school’s then dean, Guido Calabresi, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, and dining-guide moguls Tim and Nina Zagat.

Mr. Obama’s fellow graduates, like Mr. Clinton’s, aren’t just at corporate law firms, but big shots in the worlds of business, entertainment, finance, education and, obviously, politics. Still, it’s a tight field to beat Hillary Clinton, who has connections with many deep-pocketed donors, especially along the East Coast. But so far, Mr. Obama seems to be making inroads with the donor class closest to his age bracket: hedge-fund, private-equity and venture-capital investors in their 30’s and 40’s.

Mr. Obama’s closest circle of law-school friends has also produced some of his most committed fund-raisers. Citigroup executive Michael Froman and hedge-fund manager Brian Mathis, both Harvard Law School friends, are chairs of the March 9 gala being held at the Grand Hyatt. A Harvard Law Review colleague, law professor Jonathan Molot, hosted 180 people for a fund-raising event at his home in Washington, D.C., last week. At it, Mr. Obama surveyed the crowd. “Geez, I feel like I’m at a law-school reunion,” he joked.

Last month, classmate Julius Genachowski, a private-equity advisor based in Washington, D.C., arranged a meeting between Mr. Obama and about 50 new-media and technology executives at an office in midtown. It was co-hosted by former AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller and technology venture-capitalist Deven Parekh.

“I’ve gotten e-mails from people I haven’t talked to in 15 years [saying], ‘Hey, I hear you’re still friends with Barack—what can I do?’” said Thomas Perrelli, a Washington lawyer and managing editor of the law review under Mr. Obama.

Several law-school friends have emerged as informal advisors as well. Cassandra Butts, a domestic-policy expert at the Center for American Progress, met Mr. Obama in the financial-aid office in their first days on campus. She helped Mr. Obama establish his Senate office, and she has been advising his campaign on policy and outreach to Harvard Law School alumni. Mr. Genachowski, who worked for the F.C.C. and for IAC/InterActiveCorp, chairs an advisory committee on technology and the Internet.

Many of them talk with or e-mail the Senator and his staff on a weekly basis, and the conversations can range from the personal (car seats) to the practical (advice on where to find a chief technology officer for the Web site). Some spend several hours a day working the phones to garner contributions.

“Candidates tend to get forced into living in a bubble. It’s difficult to receive direct and candid feedback,” said one former classmate and close advisor. “So I and some others have really tried to be that kind of resource to him … to give it to him straight, no chaser—not what Maureen Dowd and other reporters or pundits are saying, but what the people who are really supporting him, be it with their votes or financially, are thinking and saying.”

“Certain of Obama’s classmates from Harvard and Columbia have been important supporters in many ways—not just financially but strategically,” said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the campaign. “They’re important members of the circle of people who are important in the campaign.”

Mr. Schapiro, a lawyer based in New York and Chicago, as well as Mr. Genachowski and two other Harvard Law School friends from Los Angeles, Crystal Nix Hines and Nancy McCullough, all traveled to Springfield, Ill., in February to attend Mr. Obama’s announcement of his Presidential campaign. They huddled in the front row.

“One of the great things about this campaign is that it’s allowed a bunch of us to reconnect,” said Ms. Nix Hines, a television writer who will be organizing a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama in the spring.

He’s Not Haughty, He’s My Brother!

Because so many of the law school’s graduates enter politics, it’s not uncommon to hear alumni talk about the classmate they knew would be governor of South Carolina, or professors reminisce about the student they expected would be President.

In fact, however, the White House has been attained only once by a graduate of Harvard Law School, with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.

And while the political careers of Harvard Law graduates are always a going concern in Cambridge, Mr. Obama’s Presidential race presents its own enticements.

Many of Clinton’s Ivy supporters some were appointed to important positions in the administration, including Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. (Mr. Clinton withdrew the nomination of his law-school friend Lani Guinier after an uproar over some of her articles on voting rights.)

Mr. Wilkins, the co-host of the March 20 fund-raiser, said that he always sends a small check to every student of his running for office, but that only with Mr. Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has he felt inspired to assume more responsibility.

Of course, Mr. Obama isn’t the only Harvard Law School alum to announce his candidacy this year. Republican candidate Mitt Romney graduated in 1975 (half a dozen students in the law school are working in his Boston campaign office), and now-withdrawn Democratic candidate Mark Warner, who sought advice from professors at the law school in the spring of last year, graduated in 1980.

But Mr. Obama’s supporters say that it’s not just the arguably liberal politics of the school that make the Illinois Senator the focus of their efforts instead of Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama’s connection to the school today is deeper.

“It’s a testament to the kind of people that we admit to law school,” said Mr. Wilkins, the professor hosting the March 20 fund-raiser. “There is something special about Barack and his connection to the law school …. It’s a lot easier for our students to imagine themselves as Barack, because, not so long ago, he was like them.”

“There’s a mystique about him,” said Michael Negron, a third-year student who is on the steering committee of a just-formed group of Harvard Law students supporting Mr. Obama.

On its newly launched Web site, the students often refer to the Senator in reverential terms. “Harvard Law School was an important part of Barack Obama’s life, so we’re going to make sure it’s an important part of his campaign for President,” reads one section. Another adds: “He may be a Harvard lawyer, but Barack does not have a haughty New England background.”

That very defensiveness, however, seems to point up something about how Mr. Obama’s Harvard pedigree is being integrated into his life story. After a weekend in Selma, Ala., in which he had to compete with a white woman with a degree from Yale Law School for credibility among black voters, it’s worth asking whether Mr. Obama, the first black candidate for President not to have started his political career in the civil-rights movement, gains from his attachment to an establishment bastion like Harvard. Does Harvard do as much for Mr. Obama’s candidacy as his candidacy does for Harvard?

Arguably, Mr. Obama settled that question quite nicely in Selma.

“It’s because they marched that we elected councilmen, Congressmen,” he told the crowd gathered at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church during his trip to Selma. “It is because they marched that we have Artur Davis and Keith Ellison. It is because they marched that I got the kind of education I got, a law degree, a seat in the Illinois Senate and ultimately in the United States Senate.”

(Incidentally, it was Mr. Davis, a friend of Mr. Obama’s from Harvard Law, who invited him to Selma.)

In fact, the dazzling scholastic careers of candidates like Mr. Obama are becoming a big part of their personal narratives. Early newspaper reports breathlessly chronicled his rise to the presidency of Harvard’s über-prestigious law review, dissecting his leadership style for signs of the kind of chief executive he might be. Professors have talked admiringly of his willingness to turn down federal clerkships and corporate law jobs in order to return to Chicago and work for community organizations—indications of how he resisted allowing the law school to corrupt his personal ideals. His election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review landed him coverage in The New York Times and his first book deal.

While working on the law review provides a student with plenty of opportunities to make enemies, Mr. Obama seems to have made some very good friends. That credibility is what they offer when they call prospective donors. They talk about meeting him on the basketball court, as well as the assistance he offered them with law-review articles.

“You’re taking about people who have known him for 18, 19 years. There’s a history there,” said Ms. Nix Hines, who spends “a couple hours a day” talking with people who are on the fence, telling them “what I know about Barack.”

But how far he had fallen!

He was consulting with labor lawyers from Alterman & Boop, the scrappy but respected Worth Street firm with the name out of Dickens, where callers get piped Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon while they’re on hold. The mission was twofold: to keep alive a lawsuit he’d filed against the 128-year-old firm charging he’d been the victim of harassment and retaliation from partners because of his sexual orientation; and to prepare his defense against the countersuit the firm had filed against him. But they amounted to the same task: the salvation of his career. By the end of the day, the firm had filed papers with the court that essentially ensure he’ll never get work in Big Law in this town again.

Mr. Charney had been a star on Jan. 16, when he filed his discrimination suit. A certain Manhattan subculture quickly settled down for a juicy exposé of life inside The Firms. There was plenty of Lifetime Original material in his suit—like his claim that partner Eric Krautheimer once tossed a document at Mr. Charney’s feet and said “bend over and pick it up—I’m sure you like that.” He named names, told stories and basically lit up the increasingly influential legal blogosphere.

But very quickly the ground beneath the lawyer, the only child of a Syracuse-area clothing-retail family, shifted precipitously.

He was turned out of the firm, and before long a team of 10 lawyers could be seen at 60 Centre Street, pressing their case for a countersuit against him for stealing company files and disseminating embarrassing material about big-firm clients like Goldman Sachs.

The firm managed to turn the dispute from a referendum on the culture of the firm into a referendum on Mr. Charney’s suitability as an associate.

While the entire affair has only entered the public consciousness in the last four weeks, both parties admit that the trouble with Aaron Charney began as long ago as last spring.

In court documents, Mr. Charney says that he first lodged a complaint of sexual orientation discrimination in May 2006.

He writes that 10 days later, partner David Harms took him aside to tell him that two of the partners about whom he had complained “denied making any discriminatory comments.”

But in an e-mail sent to all firm members, chairman H. Rodgin Cohen asserted a different version of the story.

“Mr. Charney first raised assertions of this sort in May 2006 through a lawyer, and his assertions were followed by a multi-million dollar demand. The Firm promptly investigated his assertions at that time, and rejected Mr. Charney’s money demand.” (According to a source familiar with Sullivan & Cromwell’s side of the litigation, Mr. Charney initially asked for $5 million, and Sullivan & Cromwell offered “a very small fraction” of that. Mr. Charney referred calls to his lawyers, and through its recently retained public-relations firm, Sullivan & Cromwell declined to comment.)

Mr. Charney’s complaint makes no mention of settlement conversations, but describes retaliation against him that endured for the following seven months.

He says he was denied opportunities to mentor summer associates, encouraged to relocate to a foreign office and that partners started claiming that his working relationship with another associate was a romantic one and that it posed a “management problem.”

In his complaint, Mr. Charney claimed, he was told that a Sullivan partner referred to their friendship as “unnatural” and that another partner thought they were too close. (That Sullivan associate, Gera Grinberg, has since been placed on paid leave.)

In an interview with The Observer the day he filed his complaint, Mr. Charney denied that he had named any price after filing his internal complaint. But if the Sullivan & Cromwell number of $5 million is to be believed—and the firm has an interest in spreading a number as high as possible—then the price tag tripled in the more than seven months that passed between those settlement talks and Mr. Charney’s now famous serving of papers on the Infirmation.com “Greedy Associates” message board.

His summons requested $15 million in damages.

Eight days after Mr. Charney filed his complaint, a related article appeared on page B7 of The Wall Street Journal.

Ostensibly about Sullivan & Cromwell’s attempts to address profound associate dissatisfaction, the story contained a particularly intriguing nugget. In the course of attempting to model a review process on that conducted by firm client Goldman Sachs, a Sullivan & Cromwell partner had disseminated a copy of a confidential review, only partially redacting the subjects’ names and positions. It was easy to identify the four Goldman employees—The Journal wrote—“a fact that individuals close to Goldman and Sullivan describe as embarrassing.” (The firm alleges that Mr. Charney stole and leaked the document to The Journal.)

More than two weeks after Mr. Charney’s own filing, the press-shy firm responded in its own way: Rather than holding a press conference to denounce Mr. Charney, the firm chose the protected forum of a court filing.

The complaint accused him of stealing that confidential Goldman review from a partner’s office and leaking it to The Journal and of improperly obtaining his own performance reviews. It paints a picture of an untrustworthy and devious associate. Mr. Charney was fired the day the suit was filed.

“The debate was: ‘Would this help us or hurt us?’” said the source familiar with Sullivan & Cromwell’s legal strategy. “The downside in filing the suit was to prolong the story, to keep it on the front pages …. [But] we concluded that we were obligated to bring the lawsuit irrespective of what it did to us.”

But while Sullivan & Cromwell pains to paint their suit as a separate action prompted by the violation of a professional code of confidentiality, that doesn’t tell the full story.

“They were hurt and angry, it was simply an opportunity to hit back, which is what every client always wants,” commented one prominent New York litigator.

At a hearing at New York State Supreme Court last week, a team of about 10 lawyers represented the firm. Buffed and gleaming, sporting fine wool suits and gold wedding bands, they were the picture of corporate exactitude and deep pockets. When their trial lawyer, Charles Stillman, slipped his coat on, it was hard to miss the huge Bergdorf Goodman label. Employment lawyer Zachary Fasman’s pocket square was folded into four perfect points.

And then entered Mr. Charney’s legal team, a more disheveled crew of four, lead by jolly civil-rights lawyer Daniel L. Alterman.

“What happened to your arm?” he joked to Mr. Stillman, who was sporting a sling because of recent arthroscopic surgery. The crowd was quiet.

“You should see the other guy,” retorted Mr. Stillman.

More than halfway into the hour-long hearing before Judge Bernard Fried, convened to discuss the return of documents to Sullivan & Cromwell, came the revelation that the firm strategists couldn’t have dreamed up. As was quickly reported on legal blogs later that afternoon, including the Law Blog of The Journal and Above the Law, Mr. Stillman raised a “critical” issue of “the utmost seriousness.” He had learned the day before that Mr. Charney had “destroyed” his hard drive.

Mr. Alterman had struggled to explain his client’s actions; his further claim, that Mr. Charney simply e-mailed himself work in the course of working as an associate at the firm, might be more difficult to prove without Mr. Charney’s hard drive.

The next day, the lead story in The New York Law Journal was headlined: “Destroyed Hard Drive Becomes Focus of Hearing in S&C Suit.”

While the Sullivan & Cromwell team was patting itself on the back, Mr. Charney’s representatives consoled themselves with the fact that the judge hadn’t lost his cool when he was informed of the destruction.

Judge Fried instructed Mr. Charney to return to the court two affidavits by Feb. 14 accounting for what he had done with his hard drive and the documents he has returned to Sullivan & Cromwell.

On Feb. 13, Sullivan called on the judge to dismiss Mr. Charney’s complaint on the grounds that the case will reveal client and firm matters and secrets. In a footnote to the 22-page motion, the lawyers address Mr. Charney’s destruction of his hard drive with a snarl.

“Charney’s attempt to blame S&C for his willful destruction of material information in violation of the New York Penal Code is false, contemptible and will be addressed at the appropriate time,” the note reads.

Mr. Alterman declined to comment on the response.

It’s an odd setting for him. The hotel’s lobby is decorated in the style of a Texan hunting lodge, with wooden beams, taxidermy and elk paintings. Guests have spotted armadillos, rabbits and raccoons on the woodsy grounds. A suite at the hotel long served as the first President Bush’s official residence (for tax and voting purposes).

But these days, Mr. Giuliani has been getting comfortable with Lone Star heavies like Thomas Hicks, the billionaire owner of the Texas Rangers; Philip Burguieres, an executive with the Houston Texans football team; and Roy Bailey, the former finance chairman of the Texas Republican Party. These and many others will all be there to cheer Mr. Giuliani on for his presumptive Presidential bid Thursday night.

And part of the bargain: The next day, Mr. Giuliani, Esq., will pad down the hall to join up to 175 lawyers for the annual partners’ meeting of Bracewell & Giuliani, the Houston-based law firm where he serves as senior partner.

“His name recognition is off the charts,” said Jim Lee, a private investor who is co-hosting the cocktail reception.

In the mad scramble among Republican Presidential candidates to secure the financial support of the Bush bundlers, at a minimum, Mr. Giuliani’s firm serves as a foothold for him in Texas.

“Is it good for him in Houston, Tex., for one of the most prominent law firms to have his name associated with it? Absolutely,” said Allen Blakemore, a Houston-based Republican political consultant who isn’t working for any of the Presidential candidates. “Does it give him contacts and entrees into business in Houston and in Texas that he did not have here before? Yes, absolutely.”

Rudy, Esquire

It’s been almost two years since Rudolph Giuliani forged a partnership with the law firm Bracewell & Patterson. In the spring of 2005, the firm, a Texas-centered regional player known for its oil, energy and banking clients, announced that Mr. Giuliani would not only be joining the firm, but renaming it.

Immediately, a flurry of speculation followed about the benefits that would accrue to Mr. Giuliani’s embryonic political campaign. The firm would give Mr. Giuliani access to the Republican heartland, and its managing partner, Patrick Oxford, has fund-raising chops and deep Bush connections that could serve Mr. Giuliani’s political ambitions.

“I think people saw that as Pat making a very smart strategic move,” said one Texas fund-raiser. “It was two things: good for the firm and Pat, and good for Giuliani.”

But as Mr. Giuliani faces criticism for waffling about a possible Presidential run, the Thursday evening fund-raiser in Houston may be a test of whether Texas money will be a significant factor in his campaign. That puts a lot of pressure on Mr. Oxford, an über-connected Bush pioneer, whom Mr. Giuliani has since appointed chairman of his exploratory committee.

“The firm worked on this a long time with Rudy, and of course we talked with him about his plans about running for President,” said Mr. Oxford in an interview. “The issue of our political clout or lack thereof … it had not a damn thing to do with it.

“I’m not trying to pull the old ‘aw, shucks,’ country-boy thing, but the reality is, Texas is a very big state—and the thought that our law firm could so clearly deliver the state that Rudy wanted? No. 1, that’s not the way Rudy’s mind works, and secondly, it doesn’t really add up, when you kind of think it through.

“If Rudy wanted this firm to deliver Texas, he made a big mistake,” Mr. Oxford said with a deep laugh.

How modest is Mr. Oxford being? One test will be Mr. Oxford’s sway with his close friends, platinum Republican donors Nancy and Rich Kinder. Mr. Kinder, a former Enron executive, now runs the major gas pipeline company Kinder Morgan, a longtime client of Bracewell. But while the couple has given the maximum amount to Mr. Giuliani’s exploratory effort, according to the documents leaked to the Daily News, the campaign had hoped that Ms. Kinder would take a leadership role, something Mr. Lee still hopes will happen. (Mr. Oxford says he hasn’t asked.)

Another major bundler targeted in those documents, Fred Zeidman, a lobbyist for Greenberg Traurig, is the former C.E.O. and chairman of the board of Seitel Inc., a seismic-data company that has also given the firm business. While Mr. Zeidman donated to Mr. Giuliani’s political-action committee, the McCain camp is due to announce his official role in the coming days.

So far, of the state’s most powerful players, Mr. Hicks and oil baron T. Boone Pickens are Mr. Giuliani’s biggest gets.

“He’s chipping away at core Bush supporters from Texas,” said Craig McDonald, the executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics. “Tom Hicks is a big player. Boone Pickens is a money mover. Those are good apples to put in your basket.”

But for Mr. Pickens and Mr. Hicks, Senator John McCain has plenty of answers: Austin lobbyist and Bush ranger Tom Loeffler, Dallas banker James Huffines, and Houston energy mogul and Bush 41 cabinet member Bob Mosbacher Sr., among others. And former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has the support of Houston energy investment banker L.E. Simmons.

On a lower profile, the Giuliani campaign has added 24 bundlers who have agreed to raise at least $100,000 and possibly more than $1 million, including Mr. Burguieres, lawyer Kent Adams, Sugar Land mayor David Wallace and investment banker Titus Harris III.

Others who have shelled out for the $2,300 full cover price include billionaire energy tycoon Dan Duncan; John Blocker, whose family founded drilling company Pride International (a client of the firm); and a range of lawyers and corporate executives. Over 200 attendees are expected for the event, which Mr. Lee said would feature “light hors d’oeuvres and a minimal bar setup.”

“The Mayor and the campaign is very frugal with his contribution dollars,” he said proudly.

“Everybody’s paying to show up and take a harder look,” said one well-known Republican fund-raiser working for a Giuliani competitor. “Everything is wide open in Texas.”

Then there are the dozens of Bush Rangers and Pioneers whose loyalties have not yet been ascertained, but whose wallets and Rolodexes are being eyed, including Lee Bass of Fort Worth (his brother and sister-in-law are hosting a Giuliani event in March) and Dallas oil-and-gasman Louis Beecherl Jr.

Mr. Giuliani has been affiliated with several law firms in the past. In the late 1970’s, after serving as an associate deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, he followed mentor Harold Tyler to the old-line law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. He spent about four years there, until he returned to Washington to serve in the Reagan Justice Department. As U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he made few friends in the white-collar bar when he started staging flashy, Law & Order–style perp walks for their affluent clients.

When he left, several law firms vied for his services, but more were turned off by the idea of their firm as a political launching pad, and Mr. Giuliani’s insistence that an aide also join as a full partner. When it was reported that White & Case was paying the pair about $1 million together for a year, Steve Brill savaged the establishment firm in The American Lawyer for lavishing such salaries on “two strangers who basically intend to use the place as a meal ticket and a mail drop.” When he ran for Mayor, political opponents called on Mr. Giuliani to account for the firm’s client list—which included the government of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega—and commitment to diversity and public service. As David Margolick wrote in The New York Times: “As far as White & Case’s public image is concerned, Mr. Giuliani has produced far more hail than rain.”

After losing that first bid to David Dinkins, Mr. Giuliani and his aide moved on to the firm now known as Anderson, Kill & Olick. But as Mr. Margolick also reported in The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyerly productivity hit a standstill when his second Mayoral bid heated up.

“Projected to bill 1,900 hours in 1992, he billed less than 178.”

While there’s probably no Manuel Noriega on the Bracewell & Giuliani client list, the affiliation could come to have its own political baggage: While there over the summer, Mr. Giuliani drew attention for his position that the United States should build more nuclear-power plants to meet its energy demands.

Bracewell has represented many of the biggest names in big oil, refinery, natural-gas and power production, including ChevronTexaco, Reliant Energy and Dynegy. In addition to its four Texas branches, the firm has offices in oil-rich Almaty, Kazakhstan and London.

And in Washington, D.C., an arm of the firm lobbies on behalf of energy clients. That has made it a favored refuge of Bush administration environmental officials, including Lisa Jaeger, former acting general counsel and deputy general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Jeffrey Holmstead, the air-quality official that environmentalists blame for scuttling the effort to limit mercury polluting by utility companies.

Of course, Mr. Giuliani will be lucky if he gets to a stage where any of this matters.

“The places where energy is a negative are not places where Republican primary voters are,” said Mr. Blakemore, the political consultant. “Giuliani has a Republican primary that he’s facing, not a general election.”

The Rainmaker Came to Texas

A report in Newsday last year said that Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, received $10 million for joining Bracewell & Giuliani, netting between $1 and $1.5 million for Mr. Giuliani.

By some measures, it seemed like a puzzling move. Mr. Giuliani was a litigator, so it was a stretch to imagine him building the corporate practice that the firm wanted to create in New York, and he wasn’t particularly known for his ties to Wall Street. Bracewell, meanwhile, was only Houston’s fifth-largest firm, more of a regional player whose profits per partner ($595,000 that year) would appear to present hurdles in recruiting talent from New York’s top firms.

Mr. Oxford said that in adding Mr. Giuliani, the firm hoped to build on his connections and name to raise the firm’s profile, and that the success has exceeded his expectations. Peter Zeughauser, a Newport Beach, Calif.–based legal consultant, agreed that by at least one measure, the effort had paid off: What was largely a medium-profile regional firm is now “much higher-profile …. Everybody knows their name,” he said.

When asked how often Mr. Giuliani was in the office, several partners noted his busy travel schedule.

But the firm heavily touted his involvement in compliance review on behalf of Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank.

Mr. Oxford conceded that while he only expected Mr. Giuliani to be helpful “on certain high-profile legal work,” his greatest contributions were expected to be, and have been, in recruiting and bringing in business.

But given the confidential nature of the firm’s work, Mr. Oxford and other Bracewell partners struggled to name specific representations that Mr. Giuliani has brought in.

The firm’s most heavily publicized New York representations—for Banco Santander, and an internal investigation for Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services that featured in a page-one story in The Wall Street Journal—did not originate with Mr. Giuliani.

Partners at the firm insisted that Mr. Giuliani had made introductions that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. The head of the firm’s New York corporate practice, Mark Palmer, for one, said he could count two clients—whose names he couldn’t reveal—that the firm had nabbed thanks to Mr. Giuliani’s introductions.

“The way our deal with Rudy would work is that he provides the introductions, and the call may come to the lawyer because of that,” Mr. Oxford said. “People know that Rudy’s not going to necessarily do the work, so they might just be prepared to call the people in his firm knowing that because they’re friends of Rudy, they’ll get a good job done for them.”

Mr. Palmer said Mr. Giuliani was extremely helpful in the way of business development, sitting for meetings with his top six or eight clients. He spent the time “talking about the firm, talking about himself,” he said.

When the new firm was announced, Mr. Oxford said he expected the New York office to grow to 100 lawyers. A report in The New York Times said they were beginning with 20 lawyers. They now number 37, and the firm is expanding to a second floor at their Sixth Avenue offices.

Initially, the partners who came on with the firm had personal Giuliani connections, but in the past year, the firm has succeeded in luring several partners from the New York branches of other successful out-of-town firms, like McDermott, Will & Emery and Winston & Strawn.

“I attribute a huge degree of the success of our New York office generally to him, and there are a lot of clients involved with that. You get momentum going,” said Mr. Oxford. He said the office lost $3 million less than the firm expected it would last year, and this year will turn a profit.

“It’s exciting. People want to be associated with it just because it’s interesting, and it could be historic over the next couple of years, depending on what happens,” said Mr. Palmer, who left the top-flight British firm Linklaters for Bracewell last year. “It’s supporting, you know, a good cause. You want to work with people who are doing things that are exciting to you.”