‘PARTNERS’: THE COMICAL UNDERBELLY OF THE LAW

“We think of ‘L.A. Law’ as our musical without the music,” joked Monte Montgomery, who wrote the book and music for “Partners,” opening today at the Matrix.

It’s been almost three years since Michigan-born Montgomery, 30, got the idea to integrate the real-life goings-on at a Century City law firm (where he was a secretary) with the pop songs he was writing at home with Jamie, 36, his wife of six years.

“The songs were quirky,” he said. “They had stories in them. It was more than ‘I love you, you love me; moon, June, croon, spoon.’ The play itself is about star-crossed lovers who start working at the same firm, and then one leaves. They end up on opposite sides of a lawsuit--then everyone lives happily ever after.” He smiled.

“I hope I didn’t spoil the story. It is a musical, after all.”

“It’s about lawyers, and also a lot about power,” added his wife, a Los Angeles native, who wrote the show’s lyrics. “Actually, I’m surprised that lawyers haven’t been exploited for entertainment before this. There’s such a seriousness about the business they do--and when there’s that much seriousness, there’s got to be some comic underbelly. That’s what we’re trying to show.”

But not too much.

“Lawyers really do want to see the show,” said Montgomery, who has since written a screenplay “about a salesman who becomes a motivational speaker, then a messiah and then an amateur golfer--all in two hours.”

“They’re intelligent, they want to be entertained, they can afford the ticket. And they like to laugh at themselves--well, maybe not themselves, but at each other.

“We’re trying to keep the lawyers happy,” he said. “In an earlier version of the script, we had an awful lot of legal terms. Then again, you don’t want to go over people’s heads. And it’s difficult to balance between the realism of being in a lawyer’s office--and also being entertaining. But we’ve got a ridiculously talented cast (of 14) who are more like lawyers dancing than dancers acting like lawyers.

“Hinton Battle plays a mail delivery guy--’information transfer specialist,’ he calls it--who gets in between everything, knows everything. Of course, he dances.”

The Montgomerys are neophytes in the theater and had a lot of trouble getting their project off the ground.

“So we raised our own money,” Monte Montgomery said, “then went out and collected it, which also took awhile. We hired a producer--and he came up with the director, Greg Holford, who’s been a really big help. I never had a visual plan. My mother’s a choreographer, but I don’t know the first thing about it. When I was writing the script, I’d just put, ‘Here they dance for 16 bars.’ ”

Although the Montgomerys are co-credited with the show’s creation (and Montgomery will be performing the musical score), he pointed out that the writing was done separately.

“We fight enough as it is,” he said. “We’re not like Rodgers and Hart or the Gershwins, who could actually sit down together and write a song. I’ll write something, then Jamie will go off and write lyrics for it. Or she’ll write lyrics and I’ll come up with the music. If it doesn’t fit, we scrap it.”

They’re taking an equally good-natured attitude about the possibility of future musicals.

“It all depends,” Montgomery said cheerfully. “If this thing bombs, it’s back to typing.”