I'm a sucker for memoirs of trial lawyers. I've been hooked on such books ever since I was 13 years old, when I first read Louis Nizer's "My Life in Court." They inspire me to keep on doing what I'm doing, and to try to do it better.

The eloquence of counsel; the excitement of the courtroom; the art of the cross-examination, litigation strategy and tactics; the tension and uncertainty of outcome; the battle of wits all these are on display in great profusion in autobiographies of trial lawyers.

"The Client Decides," by retired Paul Weiss litigator Martin London, is no exception. It continues the genre's inspiring tradition while it entertains as well. At age 83, and retired for 12 years, London looks back and has written a fascinating and gripping memoir that law students, lawyers, and even non-lawyers will enjoy.

A large part of what makes this book so enjoyable is London's easy writing style. He is neither pompous nor pedantic, nor preoccupied with legal technicalities. Instead, London writes in a relaxed, conversational, informal voice, as if he were sitting in a bar with you sharing war stories. The contractions and occasional curse words fit the mood and tone of the book. They make you think of the author as a pal.

London tells about his greatest cases. One was representing Jackie Kennedy in her legal fight against a photographer who was harassing her and her children. In another, he represented Spiro Agnew in a bribery scandal, and negotiated his resignation as vice president and his plea deal that avoided jail time. London was one of the moving forces behind the disbarment of Roy Cohn.

One of the most riveting chapters is about a successful pro bono civil rights case against a group of evangelical anti-abortionists in Oregon who were signaling others to kill physicians who performed abortions. London describes how the group eerily justified its actions on religious grounds.

London can sometimes surprise the reader with contrarian viewpoints. He rightly criticizes First Amendment lawyers, for instance, who "do not recognize any competing interest." He even dislikes the landmark case of Times v. Sullivan, which ushered in the modern era of libel law. London makes a good case for his position, no doubt in part stemming from his occasional representation of libel plaintiffs. In one libel cases, his client was a cigarette company who overcame strong odds and won the largest federal libel verdict ever sustained on appeal.

London describes how three famous lawyers ex-Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; former Attorney General and Judge, Griffin Bell; and Louis Nizer all committed the cardinal sin of reading a script at oral argument on appeal. Goldberg even read the same page twice, and Bell, when asked a question by a judge, answered unbelievably, "Your Honor, I'm sorry, that is not in my book." No lawyer who reads about these incidents will ever even think about reading an oral argument.