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Shortly after Klieman decided to move over to the defense table in 1981, she agreed to represent the alleged kingpin of a truck hijacking operation. "My client looked as if he broke legs for a living," she says, and the court clerk quipped that the fellow had a shot at acquittal "only if he wears a sheet over his head." Klieman set out to polish her client's image. She ate breakfast with him in the court cafeteria, so members of the jury could spot them chatting and relaxing. In the courtroom she touched him constantly and allowed him to carry her briefcase. Coupling this effort with a thorough defense, she won an acquittal. Credibility is critical, says the once and still actress. "You have to be able to get along with people at all levels. I have understood that there are different roles that you have to play." She pauses for a moment. "And they all better appear to be sincere."
PROVING IT "OVER AND OVER AGAIN"
"A lot of people want to be represented by a person who is 6 ft. tall and graying at the temples," says Berkeley Criminal Lawyer Cristina Arguedas, who at 5 ft. 2 in. and 29 years is neither. Arguedas offers other qualities. Says San Francisco Attorney Ephraim Margolin: "She has very good presence, is bright as a whip, and very, very fast on her feet."
Arguedas started honing those talents during law school at Rutgers, skipping most of her classes in the last two years to work at New York City's Center for Constitutional Rights. Graduating in 1979, she spent the next two years as a public defender in San Francisco, where she rolled up a stunning 13-2 record injury verdicts, then left 18 months ago to set up a criminal practice. She will not represent an accused rapist whose defense is the woman's consent: "I don't want to be in the position [on crossexamination] of saying, 'Didn't you really want it?' " Most of her clients are drug defendants. One, accused of being the ringleader of West Coast cocaine dealers, looked like a sure loser after his codefendant turned state's evidence the morning the trial began. But after testifying, under Arguedas' careful guidance, that he had been on hand during drug deals only because he was the other man's lover, her client was acquitted—a verdict that surprised even Arguedas.
The chain-smoking, New Jersey-born attorney "totally rejects" the image of the hired gunfighter favored by many trial lawyers, but she concedes, "It is very lonely in court. You are the only thing between your client and prison." The occasional added burden of sexism does not faze her. "As a woman, you have to be better than the men; you've got to prove yourself over and over again," she observes. "But I don't consider that a problem because I would want to do that anyway."
AN ADVANTAGE TO "FEMALENESS"