Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.

I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.

On a certain level, we don't try enough cases. We should try more cases before juries and let jurors decide. On grand juries, my position is the grand jury should be eliminated, but there are creative ways a lawyer can use a grand jury if they have a client with a sympathetic cause who has been wronged by the police.

Today, it's not the same playing field as when I first became a lawyer in 1977, where the government had been restricted by our wonderful Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's court rulings. Now it's all going the other way, the flow is against the defendant, against anything that could really help a client. But you still fight it, you do what you can do. It's all there is.

The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.

We had people who did housing, people who did anti-war, people who did schools. Everyone operated in their own niche, but not separately. We all were together on certain issues when it was important. Everybody was active in the '60s. I feel that there's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.

I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.