Baseball’s Barry Bonds would seem like a man in need of a really good lawyer, but he’s proving somewhat frugal, perhaps too frugal.
According to news reports, Bonds, who was indicted Friday on charges of lying to a grand jury about steroid use, suffered from sticker shock at the $900 per hour fee charged by John W. Keker, a San Francisco defense attorney who has been involved in several high-profile cases.
Bonds wanted a “steep discount” on the fee, The Wall Street Journal reported. The home run king, a millionaire many times over, also wanted another law firm to review Keker’s bills.
The negotiations didn’t go forward, and, at last report, Bonds was still looking for a lawyer experienced in federal cases to assist his other lawyers.
No one could blame Bonds for trying to shave a little off his legal costs. But, as a baseball player, he should also have taken into account won-lost numbers.
Keker’s clients generally either go free or receive lighter than expected sentences. Other lawyers credit this to Keker’s aggressive courtroom style, meticulous preparation and an ability to control witnesses.
“People shot at (Keker) with real bullets in Vietnam, so he’s not afraid of much that’s going to happen in the courtroom,” a fellow defense attorney told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“You don’t beat around the bush,” Keker told a law magazine in 2005. “You don’t make it easy for witnesses and judges to thwart you.”
In the late 1970s, Keker defended Eldridge Cleaver, the former Black Panther, on attempted murder and assault charges stemming from a 1968 confrontation with police. Cleaver was convicted of assault but did no jail time.
In a less complicated but nonetheless attention-grabbing case in the 1980s, Keker represented Ben Stein, his Yale Law School classmate. Stein, an actor and economist as well as a lawyer, had been arrested and jailed for bringing a gun through an airport metal detector.
“He got them to drop the charges,” Stein said. “And he even got my gun back. If it came down to it, he is the one person I would want on my side.”
Recently, Keker has had a series of high-profile corporate clients, including Andrew Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron and Frank Quattrone, an investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Fastow ended up with a six-year sentence for wire and securities fraud, less than was expected. An appeals court overturned Quattrone’s conviction on interfering with an investigation of the bank, and the banker ended up with no prison time.
Earlier this year, Keker represented William S. Lerach, a prominent class action attorney and Democratic contributor, in a case involving secret payments to investors. Lerach pled guilty in exchange for a sentence that some saw as light.
“It’s a phenomenal deal,” a law professor told The New York Sun. “John Keker did a great job to get that deal. Two years maximum jail time and $8 million in fines, which for Lerach is hardly more than a rounding error, is a remarkable accomplishment.”
Keker once was ranked second in a national poll that asked lawyers whom they would want to represent them in a federal criminal investigation.
It’s not surprising then, that Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a highly successful plaintiffs’ attorney, reached out to Keker after he was indicted earlier this month on charges of trying to bribe a Mississippi state judge. (On Friday, another counsel for Scruggs asked a court to allow Scruggs to fly his plane back and forth to California to consult with Keker.)
Working the other side of the courtroom, Keker headed up the successful prosecution of Oliver North in the 1989 Iran-Contra trial.
Keker graduated from Princeton University in 1965 and then entered the U.S. Marines. Wounded while serving as a platoon leader in Viet Nam, he retired from the Marines in 1967 and entered law school.
He later clerked for Earl Warren, former chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1978, he and Bill Brockett, a law school classmate, formed the San Francisco firm of Keker & Brockett. Brockett is deceased, and the firm is now Keker & Van Nest LLP.
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