Bonds hires Dream Team lawyers

This is very good news for Barry Bonds. Cristina Arguedas and Allen Ruby are both great lawyers. Arguedas has excellent and long term rapport with the all of the lawyers for the original BALCO defendants. Bonds will immediately have full access to everything that has been learned by the others. Many of the insiders are of the opinion that this team will serve Bonds much better than a team led by John Keker. Let the war begin.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7653642?nclick_check=1

 

Good for your hero.

 

So these lawyers represent the U.S. men's basketball team in the 1992 Olympics?

 

I thought maybe he hired the cast of that shitty 1990s Michael Keaton movie.

 

Bonds is a coupon-clipper who made $60 million the last three years but is too cheap to pay for first-class lawyer talent.

http://blogs.wSportsJournalists.com/law/2007/12/06/barry-bondss-legal-team-watch-whos-on-first/

Last week, Barry Bonds tried to persuade top San Francisco defense lawyer John Keker (pictured, left) to represent him in a federal perjury case. But the talks started faltering when the slugger asked Keker to handle his case at a steep discount, say several people briefed on the conversations.

Keker, who charges a $900 hourly rate, thought the request was ridiculous, these people say — especially since Bonds made nearly $60 million in salary between 2005 and 2007 alone. Keker also balked at the player’s demand to have an out-of-town law firm review the bills. Most importantly, Keker was concerned he wouldn’t have control over Bonds’s PR and legal strategies and bridled at the prospect of collaborating with the player’s current legal team. (Keker, who’s also busy representing Dickie Scruggs (here) didn’t comment; neither did Bonds.)

Yesterday, Bonds was nearing a deal with Cristina Arguedas (pictured, right), a noted Berkeley-based defense lawyer, said people familiar with the situation. (Click here for a Law Blog post on Arguedas.) The last-minute hiring underscores Bonds’s chaotic legal strategy up until this point.

With Bonds’s arraignment set for tomorrow in federal court in San Francisco, his legal moves have repeatedly backfired as his lawyers have angered prosecutors and squabbled with one another. His legal team has been spearheaded by Michael Rains, an attorney who usually defends police officers accused of misconduct in state court and who has little federal experience. In August, the slugger added John Burris, a plaintiffs lawyer with whom Rains has a contentious history, and whom Rains didn’t want on the case.

What a fucking maroon this guy is. He's cheap when it comes to lawyers, and cheap when it comes to PR. Instead of paying for a real PR guy, he tells one of his flunkies to come to SportsJournalists.com, because the price is right (FREE). You get what you pay for.

 

LOL! Yes, Charles Barkley needed a lawyer after elbowing that poor dude from Angola.

 

Of course, we fail to mention lawyers routinely negotiate rates and sometimes even waive fees altogether, particularly in celebrity cases from which they're going to generate millions of dollars in publicity. But, yeah, great BLOG! I'll take a guess that wasn't in the Top 5 reasons Keker is not on Bonds' defense team. Not even close.

 

I severely doubt top-flight lawyers waive their fees for clients banking $20 million a year.

 

Ragu, says, "it's fairly safe to say that Bonds needed him more than he needed Bonds."

That is complete BS. Bonds hired a great team of lawyers and no one can dispute that fact. Keker is the loser, not Bonds. Keker charges $ 900 per hour. Bonds hired at least two lawyers in the same class. Keker lost out on the exposure as well as the money.
In short, this is a dream case for any criminal defense attorney. Every single report thus far in the media has called the Bonds defense a "dream team."