From the first day of law school one concept is clear: No lawyer can ethically represent legal opponents.

But it could sneak up on a jury or legal opponent and deliver a sound wallop.

Converse sat down, attache case at his feet, studying his legal opponent.

He marvels when he runs into his legal opponents in the grocery store and they have a pleasant conversation.

A blind tag is a legal tag made without the legal opponent's knowledge, usually while his back is turned.

His legal opponent, representing Oswald, was the well-known attorney Gerry Spence.

As a result, he was both excoriated by his legal opponents and hailed as a hero by many independent inventors.

Robert Duvall, as his insidiously canny legal opponent, delivers yet another performance worthy of Oscar consideration.

On the basis of reciprocity, if one side is allowed to cross-examine his legal opponent at a hearing, the other party must also be given the same opportunity.

Support for Family's Appeal This leaves the court-appointed guardian, Thad C. McCanse, as the only potential legal opponent.

Hogan was given the win when he dragged an interfering Ric Flair and touched all four turnbuckles (despite Flair not being the legal opponent in the match).

Mr. Racicot's legal opponent in the McKenzie case is Timothy K. Ford, a 41-year-old Seattle lawyer who is now fighting eight executions.

Advertising prohibitions such as those being discussed by cigarette manufacturers in the United States and their legal opponents have been in place in Britain, in some cases, for several years.

If plaintiffs and defendants were prone to believe that they were more deserving, fair, and righteous than their legal opponents, that could help account for the persistence of inefficient enduring legal disputes.

"It's not a family issue anymore," Ms. Schiavo's younger brother, Bobby Schindler, said, adding that it had been years since the Schindlers considered Mr. Schiavo anything but a legal opponent.

This allows the team who uses it an opportunity to confuse the legal opponent, who turns to face what he assumes to be his opponent only to be attacked by the true legal man, often from behind.

The league is fighting for position against a diverse group of legal opponents: the players' union, the jilted buyer of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the former three-time champions of the league, the Chicago Bulls.

The process all but ensured long delays and wasted resources as N.R.C. regulators identified construction errors and design shortcomings at very late stages and as legal opponents challenged the licensing process over the course of many years.

While Klein had supported and advised Harrison during the first phase of his "My Sweet Lord" lawsuit, Klein later bought Bright Tunes, the music publishing company that sued Harrison, thus becoming his legal opponent.

As the private investigator hired by President Clinton's lawyers, Lenzner is a front-line soldier in a new kind of war, in which embarrassing information about political and legal opponents is provided for use as ammunition in today's partisan culture of scandal.

The chairwoman, Karol Corbin Walker, said the committee had questioned Mr. Verniero for two hours and interviewed more than 200 of his former employers, colleagues and legal opponents and found that few were impressed by his legal acumen.

Indeed, top tobacco executives have begun negotiating with their legal opponents over a global settlement, one in which the industry might pay hundreds of billions of dollars and submit to stricter regulation in return for immunity from all or most of this avalanche of lawsuits.

Both Mr. Sender and Ms. Colburn have admitted that they hired Anthony Pellicano, the jailed private detective charged with wiretapping and conspiracy, and that they knew he was surreptitiously recording their legal opponents, the F.B.I. records show.

The Christensen indictment quoted at length from conversations between Mr. Christensen and Mr. Pellicano, in which Mr. Pellicano relayed details of private phone calls between a legal opponent of Mr. Christensen's and her lawyer.

The talks, with the companies' legal opponents, have for the first time included the top executives of the nation's two largest tobacco companies, Steven F. Goldstone of the RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation and Geoffrey C. Bible of the Philip Morris Companies.