WILLIAM H. GINSBURG

Gone are the countless phone calls, the television appearances, the public battle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr. These days, William H. Ginsburg, the Century City lawyer who represented Monica S. Lewinsky for four months as a favor to her father, is simply a California malpractice attorney. And he has no plans to do anything else.

“I’m back doing what I know how to do,” he said this week, while working on closing arguments in a case involving an orthopedic surgeon’s diagnosis of an Achilles’ injury. Since returning from the Washington limelight, Ginsburg said he has tried about five or six cases. “I’ve been very lucky,” he said. “I’ve won most of them.”

His widely criticized representation of Lewinsky--which ended when she hired Jacob Stein and Plato Cacheris, lawyers well-schooled in the ways of Washington--certainly taught him a lot.

“Like most people in the United States, I became acutely aware that Washington is its own world and out of touch with the people of this country,” he said.

“It made me understand that scandal in Washington is a way of life, and we waste a lot of time and money in feeding the Washington political machine instead of children, education and people who need it. It made me realize the press no longer subscribes to the concepts of free speech but commercial speech. I also learned that the Office of Independent Counsel is a dangerous one and it should be eliminated.

“I learned that there is no end to the hubris of the president and Congress and I learned, most importantly of all, that I’m from Los Angeles and just a country lawyer.”

But would he do it all over again?

The 56-year-old attorney laughed. “I would always enter the fray, no matter the issue, for a dear friend and a wonderful man like Bernie Lewinsky and his daughter.”