THE LAWYER : Another Feather in His Cap : Wylie A. Aitken, the Smalls’ attorney, has done well as a courtroom ‘Robin Hood.’ He calls Friday’s judgment his ‘most satisfying’ yet.

Wylie A. Aitken, the nationally known attorney who won a $2-million verdict Friday against Orange County on behalf of the family of a girl mauled by a mountain lion in a county park, compares trial lawyers to “modern day Robin Hoods.”

The critical difference, he said, is “we get paid.”

Aitken, 49, a former president of the California Trial Lawyers Assn., said his victory for 10-year-old Laura Small and her family is “the most satisfying” in a string of similar victories in the past two years, with three cases alone totaling $9 million in jury awards.

In the last few moments before the verdict was announced Friday, Aitken said he turned to Laura and told her, “This is a heck of a way for a grown man to make a living.”

But Aitken has apparently made a very good living at it, as evidenced by his elegant penthouse office overlooking the Civic Center Plaza, where he has tried many of his cases.

In 1987, Aitken was listed in “The Best Lawyers in America,” a book in which attorneys listed other lawyers they would recommend to their own family and friends.

Representing the injured and families of the dead in court is “a little like a doctor,” he said, in that “you keep as objective as you can and try to avoid becoming emotional.”

“In a long trial,” Aitken said in an earlier Times interview, “I try to make things interesting for the jury. I make fun of myself. The law can be too stuffy, too rigid. We can get to the truth, but we don’t have to make everyone around us so uncomfortable.”

A compact man with salt-and-pepper hair, Aitken is also fond of using props and gadgets in the courtroom, including the laser pointer he used in the Small trial.

What is satisfying when he wins a large judgment, Aitken said, “is not just that a citizen has received some compensation that they deserved.”

The larger satisfaction, he said, is when the fallout from such verdicts is “safer products, safer roads, safer parks.”

As a role model, Aitken cited Clarence Darrow, or “anyone who represents causes that are not popular.”

Aitken is a politically active Democrat who served on a committee to block the removal of Rose Elizabeth Bird from the California Supreme Court and is now a member of a commission trying to solve the problem of the county’s overcrowded jail system.

A resident of Southern California since 1955, Aitken is a graduate of Santa Ana College and Marquette University Law School. Born in Detroit and raised in Wichita, Kan., he has been married to his wife, Bette, for 28 years. The couple has three children.