THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : INTO THE SPOTLIGHT / MILTON GRIMES : Lawyer on the Go Representing 2 Dismissed Jurors

Forget the law library. If you’re looking for Milton Grimes these days, call him in the limo.

The Newport Beach attorney has been spending most of his time lately cruising from one television station to the next, giving interviews about--what else?--his new clients, two ex-O.J. jurors.

Grimes, who served as attorney to Rodney G. King, has been retained free of charge to represent recently dismissed panelists Jeanette Harris and Willie Cravin. In both the King and Simpson trials, he has established himself as a legal spin doctor--half attorney, half press agent, his reputation growing with each client.

As a result, his phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

The “Today Show” wanted the threesome in the studio at 4 a.m. sharp last week for a special program on the anniversary of the murders. CNN sent a chauffeur-driven automobile to Grimes’ Newport Beach office at 5:30 p.m. to shuttle the attorney to Hollywood in time for “Larry King Live.” And Tom Snyder’s show asked Grimes and Cravin to be on hand for a late-night appearance.

Grimes and Cravin made a half-dozen stops one recent night in a black limousine complete with two phones along an interview route that stretched from the CNN studio to KNBC. At one TV station, an anchor was overheard saying: “Only in Los Angeles would a juror who got kicked off of a panel show up here a day later in a limousine.” And with a high profile attorney in tow, no less.

Grimes, 49, who says he was sought out by both Cravin and Harris, explains it this way: “Unless they go public they won’t have their side heard.

“Hopefully [the public will] come to an intelligent conclusion that these people sat down and said: ‘Hey, I don’t have any preconceived notion about [Simpson’s] guilt. I have no preconceived notion about his innocence. I will judge this case fairly and I will open myself up to questioning.’ ”

Grimes has either sat in on his clients’ interviews or been within earshot, ready to interrupt if they are asked a question he deems “improper” or “sensationalized.”

Affable, even charming, he knows how to play the media. Even before Harris and Cravin retained him, Grimes was a regular on Larry King’s periodic evening panel of Simpson trial experts. He has had plenty of other moments in the spotlight through a host of high-profile cases he has participated in over the years, including five capital punishment cases. However, he is most recognized for joining several other attorneys in representing Rodney King in King’s civil rights suit against the city of Los Angeles.

Grimes came in for some criticism in that case when the federal judge hearing the lawsuit turned down a number of lawyers’ fee claims after King won his case. Grimes asked unsuccessfully to be reimbursed for the hours he had spent with King in interviews with the news media, in appearances on the Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue television shows and, in one case, attending the premiere in Oakland of a three-hour movie about Malcolm X.

While some of his colleagues have accused Grimes of being a media hound and worse, other lawyers have praised him as an effective racial advocate.

“I am impressed by his ability as a spokesperson for African Americans,” said veteran civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman. “He understands what it means and what it feels like to be an African American in a racist country and he expresses that sentiment in a way that is necessary.”

Ex-juror Harris--who was dropped from the jury in April after Judge Lance A. Ito said he had been informed that she was once a victim of domestic violence--contacted Grimes to seek his representation just days after she granted an explosive interview to KCAL-TV. From then on, all of Harris’ interviews had to be cleared through Grimes.

The day that Cravin was dismissed from the jury for allegedly intimidating another juror, he contacted Harris, who told him to call Grimes before he went public, Grimes said. Cravin told reporters who had camped out in his front lawn that if they wanted to talk to him, they had to talk to his attorney first.

With Grimes’ help, Cravin put out a strong message: What got him kicked off the Simpson jury was the stereotype that any African American man who does not grin and laugh is a menacing figure.

In addition to setting up numerous interviews over the past two weeks for Cravin and Harris, Grimes has been fielding requests from all the major networks that he and the two jurors be on hand for interviews in case of a verdict or a mistrial.

“I’m doing this for the biggest fee in the world,” he says over the limousine’s telephone. “Self-gratification.”