Lawyer on the Line

Thanks to Deanne Stillman for her compelling profile of Gloria Allred, distinctive in its lack of Vanity Fair hype (“G-L-O-R-I-A,” Nov. 13). Stillman’s keen, witty and objective take on a controversial public figure gave me the rare impression that I wasn’t being fed a mouthful of gaff.

I’ve had friends seek Allred’s counsel as well as cross swords with her. I’ve always considered her choice of battles noble but thought that her love of self-congratulatory personal press undermined those causes. Stillman is one who is able to rehumanize people the press has made appear two-dimensional. Her portrayal of Allred is a complex character study of a civil-rights warrior in a skirt-hostile system.

Terri E. Miller

Los Angeles

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Be warned: If you don’t have at least $100 (maybe more now--my experience with Allred was a few years ago) up front, no one will even read the form you fill out and send in. It takes a few hundred more for someone to evaluate it and honor you with an appointment. I was asked to hand over $2,500 before she would even consider my “really good case.”

Barbara Leverich

Marina del Rey

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Stillman is incorrect in stating that Ellie Nesler “killed the man who had just been convicted of molesting her son.” The man Nesler killed was in court preparing to go on trial for molestation. While he may have been guilty, his only conviction on that charge had been in the court of public opinion.

Ray Bracy

Tustin