For thirty years, when a powerful person in America was in the worst trouble of his life, the call went to one office in Washington. Get me Edward Bennett Williams.
He took the clients no one wanted to be seen with. A union boss the government was determined to convict, and he won an acquittal. A senator the whole country had turned against. A former governor accused of taking a bribe, and again an acquittal. Williams did not look for easy cases. He took hard ones and made them look winnable.
The secret was not charm, though he had that too. It was preparation past the point anyone thought necessary. He knew the government’s case better than the government did, and he tried the case in the courtroom, not in the newspapers, because he believed the courtroom was the one place a person could still get a fair hearing after everyone outside had already made up their minds.
He built a firm on that idea and it still stands today. And he worked from a principle older than any of his clients: that the harder a person is to defend, the more the whole system depends on someone being willing to do it, and to do it well. The right to a defense means nothing if it folds the moment the client becomes unpopular.
The lesson under all of it is the one lawyers forget when a case gets loud. The work is done before you ever stand up. Williams won because by the time the trial started he had out-prepared everyone in the room, and the client nobody wanted walked out beside him.
Edward Bennett Williams (1920 to 1988) founded the firm Williams and Connolly in 1967. He told his own story in One Man’s Freedom (1962).
