Robert S. Bennett has been a lawyer for more than forty years. In that time, he’s taken on dozens of high-profile and groundbreaking cases and emerged as the go-to guy for the nation’s elite. Bob Bennett gained international recognition as one of America’s best lawyers for leading the defense of President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case. But long before, and ever since, representing a sitting president, he has fought for justice for many famous (and some now infamous) clients. This is his story.

Born in Brooklyn and an amateur boxer in his youth, Bennett has always brought his street fighter’s mentality to the courtroom. His case history is a who’s who of figures who have dominated legal headlines: super lobbyist Tommy Corcoran, former Secretaries of Defense Clark Clifford and Caspar Weinberger, Marge Schott, and, most recently, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Bennett also served as special counsel to the Senate during the ABSCAM and Keating Five scandals and was a leading member of the National Review Board for the Protection of Children & Young People, created by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the sex abuse allegations.

Taking the reader deep within his most intriguing and difficult cases, In the Ring shows how Bennett has argued for what’s right, won for his clients, and effected his share of change on the system. This is an intimate and compelling memoir of one lawyer’s attempt to fight hard and fair.

"Important people caught in a jam — Bill Clinton embroiled in the Paula Jones lawsuit, Judith Miller facing jail time for contempt, Paul Wolfowitz battling ethics charges at the World Bank — often hire superlawyer Bennett to represent them. In this self-satisfied memoir, Bennett (a partner at the white-shoe firm Skadden, Arps) pays effusive tribute to friends and colleagues, proffers nuggets of wisdom to young attorneys ('While you should overprepare your cases, you should always under try them,' i.e., keep the presentation simple) and ferociously defends his clients' reputations in rehashes of their cases. But his most zealous advocacy is for his brilliant lawyering, evidenced by courtroom proceedings that the author excerpts at great length. Alas, in print, lawyerly histrionics become rambling, turgid improvisations that try the reader's patience: 'Your Honor, I don't look like Alice [in Wonderland]... but I somehow feel like I am. I'm perplexed as she was. I'm concerned as she was. There are things that just don't fit together for me.' What does come through is the preening self-regard ('Had I been younger and less experienced, I might have been intimidated meeting one on one with the president') of an archetypal Washington mover-and-shaker." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"How does the conventional narrative of Washington, D.C., the one presented by 'In the Ring' — two parties in a state of permanent conflict, squabbling while the people's business sits unfinished — account for a man like Robert Bennett?

Bennett is one of the city's most prominent defense attorneys, the guy the rich and famous turn to when they get in trouble; his past clients range..." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) from Bill Clinton and Judith Miller to Paul Wolfowitz and John McCain. He is also part of that unique group of lobbyists, political consultants and lawyers whose success is completely independent of which party holds political power. And while there may be nothing tawdry about representing clients with diverse views (everyone deserves a good lawyer), Bennett's book fails to recognize that his professional success is a direct product of the partisanship he decries.

Bennett's story begins with a brief description of his middle-class childhood in Brooklyn, but here, as elsewhere, he does not show much desire to move beyond cliches ('Everyone in life is dealt some good cards and some bad ones. One of my not-so-good cards was the divorce of our parents'). The 'our' refers to Robert and his brother, Bill, but the reader does not get much insight into why Robert went on to become a Democrat while his younger sibling followed a decidedly different path (Bill is the former drug czar and social conservative activist). Potentially juicy anecdotes are discarded much too quickly — Bill's date with Janis Joplin (!) takes up only a single paragraph — and pretty soon the elder brother is off to Georgetown Law under the guidance of legendary lobbyist and fixer Tommy 'the Cork' Corcoran.

In the 1980s we glimpse Robert Bennett working major cases (Abscam, the Keating Five), often as special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee. Bennett is a serviceable summarizer, although his accounts of the various cases under discussion read like press releases for whatever client he happened to be working for at the time. Going through his career case by case, he does show an admirably gentle side, remorsefully recounting the occasions where the best defense demanded that he embarrass someone in court. The lone exception to this generosity of spirit concerns special counsel Lawrence Walsh, who pursued Bennett's client Caspar Weinberger (later pardoned by the first President Bush on Iran-contra-related charges) and who is described as having the obsessiveness of Captain Ahab. By this point in his career, however, Bennett was playing to both sides of the aisle and smoothly working the Washington 'scandal machine' that he speaks of so contemptuously.

One problem with this type of book is that the author is unwilling to say anything short of laudatory about his clients. So, for example, we hear about former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott's love and respect for people of different cultures, even though Schott allegedly once used a racial epithet to refer to two of her outfielders.

Bennett does not help matters by sprinkling the text with dreary bits of lawyerly wisdom: 'For me, being in the courtroom was the best part of the job' and 'The most important of the lessons I learned as a law clerk was the importance of being candid and straight with the court.'

The book's long defense of President Clinton during the Paula Jones case has similar deficiencies. Bennett's analysis of the issues and personalities involved (although not without merit) could have been written by anyone who watched television in the late '90s. 'The country was very fortunate that President Clinton could compartmentalize matters as well as he did,' Bennett writes at one point, perhaps revealing more than he intends. Still, Bennett's decision to constantly inform the reader of all the important crises from which Clinton was distracted while the Jones controversy dragged on is undermined by the eventual and inevitable revelation that the president had been consorting with a 22-year-old White House intern during the same period.

In December, John McCain found himself facing the possibility that the New York Times would print an explosive story about his relationship with a female lobbyist. As the paper delayed publication, McCain hired Bennett and threatened legal action. Bennett was of course the perfect choice, given his experience with potentially scandalous cases and his history — dating back to the Judith Miller imbroglio — with the Times leadership. One of his responsibilities after the story hit the presses in February was to go on every possible cable news show and defend McCain. Strangely, or perhaps not, the hosts kept hyping 'In the Ring.' Fortuitous timing, you might think. For Bennett, it doesn't matter whether the focus of the latest scandal is a Republican presidential candidate or a Democratic president. What his career proves, if nothing else, is that while the people may suffer from too many bickering politicians, not everyone in Washington is so unlucky."

Reviewed by Isaac Chotiner, a Washington writer who contributes to the New Republic and other publications, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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“In the Ring is an extraordinary tale by an extraordinarily gifted trial lawyer. Bob Bennett’s story takes us from Brooklyn to the U.S. Supreme Court with drama and suspense packed in between. Wonderful history for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.”

Former Senator Warren B. Rudman, author of Combat: Twelve Years in the U.S. Senate

“Bob Bennett has written a fascinating inside account of some of the biggest Washington scandals and controversies of our era. As a what-happened and a how-to, In the Ring is indispensable.”

Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Bennett has represented Washington power brokers, heads of state, and even a sitting president. Now one of the most well-known Beltway lawyers talks about the law, his life, and the cases hes won. 8-page photo insert.

Robert S. Bennett has been a lawyer for more than forty years. In that time, he's taken on dozens of high-profile and groundbreaking cases and emerged as the go-to guy for the nation's elite. Bob Bennett gained international recognition as one of America's best lawyers for leading the defense of President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case. But long before, and ever since, representing a sitting president, he has fought for justice for many famous (and some now infamous) clients. This is his story.

Born in Brooklyn and an amateur boxer in his youth, Bennett has always brought his street fighter's mentality to the courtroom. His case history is a who's who of figures who have dominated legal headlines: super lobbyist Tommy Corcoran, former Secretaries of Defense Clark Clifford and Caspar Weinberger, Marge Schott, and, most recently, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Bennett also served as special counsel to the Senate during the ABSCAM and Keating Five scandals and was a leading member of the National Review Board for the Protection of Children & Young People, created by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the sex abuse allegations.

Taking the reader deep within his most intriguing and difficult cases, In the Ring shows how Bennett has argued for what's right, won for his clients, and effected his share of change on the system. This is an intimate and compelling memoir of one lawyer's attempt to fight hard and fair.

ROBERT S. BENNETT is the country’s leading criminal defense and crisis management lawyer for corporations and individuals in trouble. He has recently represented Enron, KPMG, and Health South. He is a partner with the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, the photographer Ellen Gilbert Bennett.