In another conversation, he told his longtime lawyer, Bruce Cutler, never to admit there was a mob.

Tom Ray, a longtime lawyer here and a prominent Democrat, said the judge's integrity was beyond dispute.

"To say she's frustrated would be a light term," Rich Nichols, Jones's longtime lawyer and business manager, said.

Watkins, a longtime lawyer who also owns an energy investment company, has a background filled with the country's post-1950's history.

A longtime lawyer who helped a death row inmate win a new trial is fighting to stay on the case.

Ralph Smith, her longtime lawyer, said the probable cause of death was heart failure.

But according to several longtime lawyers in Brooklyn, she was not considered among the borough's elite legal minds.

"I usually bill baseball once a month," said Hoynes, a longtime lawyer for baseball.

Still, the prospect of today's proposed deal sailing through the Justice Department's antitrust review procedures was startling to some longtime lawyers.

"He chose his life," said Dan Monnat, his longtime lawyer.