Terry Christensen: In Your Face, But In An Honest Way
Before yesterday's announcement of the indictment of attorney Terry Christensen in connection to the Anthony Pellicano Wiretapping Trial of the Century, we'd never heard his name. Sure, we'd collected Scary Hollywood Lawyer cards like every other kid, and while we can recite the stats from
Bert Field's card from memory (lead the league in cease-and-desists for three straight years!) and tear up with nostalgia when we think of the pleasing sound Marty Singer's rookie card made flapping against the spokes of our Schwinn with the banana seat, we're pretty sure our incomplete set didn't include one for former MGM boss Kirk Kerkorian's longtime counsel. Today's LAT fills us in on Christensen's "in-your-face style," which helped elevate him to the "top tier" of "hardball Hollywood lawyers":
For 35 years, the former Marine Corps prosecutor has served as billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's legal muscle in contentious deals involving studios, casinos, airlines and the nation's biggest automakers. According to court records, Christensen once told Kerkorian's former wife that his client would "bury" her financially if she continued with a child support lawsuit.
"We are tough and we can be, I guess, ruthless," he told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1994. "But it's always within the bounds of honesty, and I think that's why courts respect us." [...]But one Los Angeles lawyer, who asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing his career, said he and several other lawyers left Christensen's firm after tiring of his "we-will-do-anything-to-win" philosophy. [...]
Christensen has never been shy about his aggressive style. His firm's website still includes a 1989 Business Week profile of Christensen in which he briefly sums up his pugnacious approach to the law.
"Sometimes," he said, "we have to get in the other guy's face."
Now that the Christensen's been established as "tough" and "ruthless" (but within the bounds of honesty!), his team will need to immediately ramp up its publicity counterspin cycle (which has already started with positive quotes from his partners, one of whom calls him a "paragon of integrity" in the piece), plying reporters desperate for copy with stories of the lawyer's "warm" and "selfless" volunteer work in the teddy bear cancer ward of Children's Hospital.
