PRODUCER’S TRIALS HELPED HER PUT ‘L.A. LAW’ IN ORDER

When Terry Louise Fisher was graduated from UCLA Law School in 1971, she had no intention of being trapped in a law office “with those hermetically sealed windows.”

Now she spends her days in just such offices on the set of NBC’s electric new series “L.A. Law,” which she co-created with Steven Bochco. They also co-wrote the pilot and have worked with additional writers on subsequent scripts.

It appears that Fisher and Bochco may be in business together for a long time. Even though the 10 p.m. Friday series hasn’t commanded overwhelming ratings, NBC has just picked it up for the full season--a total of 22 episodes.

A tall, vivid brunette with a spirited manner, Fisher, 40, clearly relishes the fact that her life keeps veering in oblique directions. “Always,” she said, “my life has been ruled by what I didn’t want to do.” Instead of going into private practice after law school, Fisher became a deputy district attorney, later a city attorney and an entertainment lawyer (for 20th Century Fox, Filmways and MGM).

Along the way, she gathered the legal insights that eventually led to her collaboration with Bochco and her job as supervising producer of “L.A. Law.” She is also a novelist and screenwriter and spent three years as a writer and producer on “Cagney & Lacey.”

The experience has served her well. The series’ opener told the horrific story of a dying woman (played by Alfre Woodard) who was subjected to brutal questioning by the defense in a rape trial. The episode came out of Fisher’s experience. “It was the first case I saw at the D.A.’s office,” she said. It convinced Fisher that she would never want to be a defense attorney.

So far, the major criticisms about the show have come in letters from lawyers. “We’re showing the pimples. Lawyers don’t like to have the pimples show,” she said.

Fisher said she understands their consternation. “You could swim in the ambiguity of this show. Someone said that lawyers are basically flawed human beings because they are taught to be able to argue either side of any issue at any time for pay.” She said she believes that statement is true.

In “L.A. Law,” lawyers aren’t the heroes we’re accustomed to seeing on television, she said. In traditional lawyer shows, such as “Matlock” or “Perry Mason,” the clients are almost always innocent and the defense lawyer almost always wins. In “L.A. Law,” Fisher said, the clients are often guilty and the lawyer sometimes gets them off. “It’s always been, how does the lawyer solve the problem? On our show, it’s how does the problem affect the lawyer? It’s about what the practice of law does to people.”

What being an assistant DA did to Fisher was to turn her off to the criminal justice system in 2 1/2 years--and convince her to pack a gun. “I was in total despair. People were in my office, screaming. And not liberals from Bel-Air. They were nice working-class people from Watts who would get off a bus with their paychecks and get hit over the head and their money stolen. They’d ask me, ‘Why don’t you do something?’ ”

Fisher found there wasn’t much she could do. “The criminal law system doesn’t work. It works in England. Justice there is sure, swift and certain. You go from trial to appeal in three, four months. Here, our system can drag out cases for 12 years.”

Fisher is convinced that the U.S. justice system is an “elaborate win-lose field where lawyers get to play games.” Society is the steady loser, she said.

When Fisher went to work for the DA’s office, the police strongly advised her to carry a weapon. She already knew how to use one; a friend’s father had taught her how when she was 10. She was attacked once, outside court by a 17-year-old defendant in front of five armed marshals.

Fisher hasn’t used her pistol yet, but she will if she has to. “I’m terrified of being a victim,” she said. “I was a DA and I heard cases of guys who would break into houses of women and torture them for 20 hours. People say, ‘If you had a gun, they could take it away and kill you.’ I’d rather be killed than that.”

Fisher talked about her gun with some excitement and a small smile. “I know, there’s a romance in it. When I talk about it, I feel kind of macho. Women like to know they can fight back.”

Her husband was an entertainment lawyer, so she went to law school, fully expecting to go into practice with him. They were divorced after her first year of law school. “Isn’t that perfect poetic justice?” she said with a laugh.

So why did she continue law school? “Are you kidding? I was divorced. There were 1,540 guys.”

But the men, most of whom had “gone to law school lock-step” were boring, she said. The women were “so interesting, of different ages, different backgrounds.” It was around that time that Fisher became a feminist. She said, ruefully, “I was always so male-oriented and I was always so proud of it.”

When she went job hunting after graduation in 1971, she really had her consciousness raised. “I had no feminist instincts at all. But you couldn’t help becoming a feminist.”

She thought she’d landed a job with John Van de Kamp, now California attorney general, who was then staffing a new unit at the federal public defender’s office. But a few days after her interview, he told her that another woman had gotten the job.

Fisher was taken aback. “ ‘I’m not sure I get it. You’re hiring 11 lawyers,’ ” she said she told him. According to Fisher, Van de Kamp replied, “I’ve already hired my woman. Don’t you get it?” Fisher said, “No. I haven’t applied for a job as a woman. I’ve applied for a job as a lawyer.” The other woman was much better qualified, explained Van de Kamp, who Fisher believes is “basically a good guy. He just didn’t get it.”

Tokenism and paternalism were the norm, she said. Fisher was to hear the same phrase--”We already have our woman”--as she went from one interview to another. She said she pulled “political strings”--she wouldn’t say which ones--to get her job at the Los Angeles County DA’s office. “They didn’t want me.” “Honey,” she said she was told, “you remind me of my daughter. I wouldn’t want my daughter doing a job like this.”

While she may have turned off marriage, she hasn’t turned off on men and is currently seeing a record producer.

Fisher admires “L.A. Law” executive producer Bochco for his world view. “He’s somebody you’d want out there putting stuff into the universe. He’s really a guy who has something to say.”

One of Fisher’s criticisms of “Hill Street Blues” is that it is “too male, too outer-directed, too yang.” While she loves the bonding of “Cagney & Lacey,” it is, she said, “too yin,” or too female. One of the things she likes about “L.A. Law” is “men and women complementing each other” on screen as well as off.

“Steven and I complement each other in a nice way. There are things he knows, I don’t know. And things I know he would never know in a hundred years.” They listen to each other, she said. “The show’s very synergistic in that way, the blending of the two. It’s interesting having men and women giving that kind of energy to one another.”

Fisher is pleased with the yin and yang of it--the blending of female and male energy.