Whetting the Appetite for Sound Bites

In the universe of talking-head TV lawyers, Peter Arenella sized up his own role like this: “On those infrequent occasions when Alan Dershowitz was not available, I got the call.”

That still left plenty of air time for Arenella, a UCLA law professor, who could be seen on one channel or another giving his take on the Menendez case and the Unabomber, or on such issues as “jury nullification.” Or, of course, the Simpson case, which became a full-time job for him as an expert commentator.

The experience left him so disillusioned that he could nod at Woody Allen’s comment in “Deconstructing Harry” that the devil had a special place reserved for “TV lawyers.”

Though lawyers had provided occasional commentary for news and documentary shows from the onset of television, it was Court TV, along with a series of Los Angeles-area cases--Menendez, the two Rodney King beating trials and Simpson’s two trials--that took this sideline to new levels.

Arenella, a Harvard Law School graduate, became a familiar face during the 1994-95 Simpson criminal trial when he appeared daily on KTLA-TV and on ABC News. He told himself this was an opportunity to help “a vast audience . . . decode legal jargon.” But he also felt the seductions of TV: the recognition, the rush and--with the Simpson work--the money.

His real problem was what the medium did to you. It wasn’t merely how you’d shave off a beard, pronto, if the producer didn’t like it. Or how you got jealous if Leslie Abramson was picked instead to do “Nightline.” It was what TV “wanted” you to say.

What flourished on TV, Arenella found, were “sound-bite accounts” or “scorecard” stuff, “which [lawyers] are screwing up . . . which party will ultimately prevail,” the equivalent of thumbs-up or thumbs-down film reviews.

Early on, he offered a nuanced take on whether Simpson was given preferential treatment when allowed to surrender voluntarily. What made the air was his wry follow-up that Simpson was hardly a flight risk. “After all, where could he go where people would not recognize him?” The next day, O.J. took off in his Bronco.

Still, the appetite for predictions never waned, he said, the more decisive the better. If he balked at giving 10-second bites, someone else would, he said.

Once lampooned in UCLA law students’ annual show as the publicity-hungry “Professor Happyfella,” Arenella went public with his own concerns in an article late last year, “The Perils of TV Legal Punditry,” for University of Chicago Legal Forum.

“I am done doing it,” he swore recently.

Days later, he called back. Another show had asked him to come on. He wanted to ‘fess up: He went.