INTO THE SPOTLIGHT / LARRY R. FELDMAN : When ‘Dream Team’ Needs Its Own Lawyer

He rarely gets hounded for autographs like Robert L. Shapiro, and his courtroom cadence will never be confused with Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s. But when O.J. Simpson’s defense attorneys need legal advice, Larry R. Feldman is their lawyer of choice.

Feldman represented Cochran when he was slapped with a palimony suit recently by his former mistress. (Feldman succeeded in getting most of the lawsuit thrown out). And when Shapiro was sued for libel by Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, he turned to Feldman for help.

Feldman, a 52-year-old veteran trial lawyer whose confidence is not tainted by pretentiousness, likes to call himself a “lawyer’s lawyer,” an attorney who judges himself not by public attention but by the recognition he gets from his colleagues. These days, he is getting a lot of both.

He secured a reported $25-million settlement for the 13-year-boy who said he was molested by entertainer Michael Jackson. (Ironically, Feldman went up against Cochran, who represented Jackson). A few weeks ago, Feldman asked a jury to award $2 million to a train conductor who was injured when a Santa Fe railroad locomotive collided with another train; the jury gave him $4 million.

Currently, Feldman represents the Orange County couples who are suing the University of California and its famed fertility doctors, contending that their eggs and sperm were stolen.

“I’m on the side of God in this case,” Feldman says.

When Feldman stopped by Judge Lance A. Ito’s courtroom to give Cochran an update on the palimony suit, the judge asked him if he was the “in-house counsel to the ‘dream team.’ ”

“It makes me proud, it really does,” said Feldman, who drew up Shapiro’s retainer with Simpson. “It’s nice at this stage in my life to have these people have enough confidence in me to represent them.”

Shapiro and Feldman have been friends since they were students at Hamilton High School on the Westside. Both came from working-class families and shared a fondness for partying, Feldman said.

While Shapiro went to UCLA, Feldman attended Cal State Northridge. On a lark, he decided to take the law school entrance exam. He aced it and was admitted to Loyola Marymount.

“It was like a duck finding water,” Feldman said. He graduated first in his class and was the editor of the Loyola Law Review.

He soon found his niche in civil law. In 1989, the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Assn. named him trial lawyer of the year after he won $5.5 million for three Marriott Corp. executives in a wrongful-termination lawsuit and $8.7 million for a man who was nearly crushed to death by a 600-pound block of ice.

“I want to be involved in things that are right, socially and politically,” he said.

“He is a brilliant lawyer,” said Shapiro, whose legal scuffle with Fuhrman over a critical New Yorker magazine article is expected to go to court Sept. 27. “He’s hard-working, thorough, well-prepared. He has great demeanor, tremendous trial skills, fabulous personality and he gets along with people.”

Although he is not as famous as his two clients, Feldman is well-known among lawyers and court watchers. When Jackson recently released his new album, using “Jew me/sue me” and “Kick me/kike me” in the song “They Don’t Care About Us,” people stopped Feldman on the street to inquire if he was the target of the singer’s lyrics.

“I’ve told them it’s certainly possible,” said Feldman, who is Jewish. “I haven’t been able to rule it out.”

Jackson issued a statement saying the song’s lyrics target racism, bigotry and stereotyping and that he was sorry if they had been misinterpreted. He has since prepared a new version of the song.

In Cochran’s palimony case, the attorney’s former mistress--Patricia Cochran--was seeking half of everything he earned from 1983 to the present. The judge dismissed most of the case. It is yet to be determined whether Patricia Cochran can claim part of Cochran’s earnings from 1983 to 1985, before he married his second wife.

Although Feldman and Cochran were once adversaries, Cochran showers his colleague with praise. “I can’t think of anyone else I would rather go to,” he said. “I say this based on opposing him.”

But Cochran added: “I hope I don’t need him anymore.”