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Petrocelli's own handpicked team of four lawyers, a paralegal, one legal assistant and a secretary worked with a curious dynamic. A logical and orderly man, Petrocelli is nevertheless superstitious and a creature of habit. In several of his big civil trials, he had set up a courtside work center outside the main offices of his law firm. Once settled in, he had never set foot back in the office until the trial was over. He had never lost a case when he did this, so the Simpson case was not going to be an exception. Gelblum laughs at his old friend's habits. "Dan's the kind of guy who wants to keep going back to the restaurant where he had a good meal the last time, while I'm trying to convince him to try a new place with me."
Apart from that Petrocellian tradition, the operation hummed with the latest technology. Once an hour, at the Doubletree suite, the computer automatically indexed all documents on the case, a considerable task, given its volume. In addition to housing the criminal-trial transcript, the computer contained more than 8,000 pages of civil-trial transcript, 857 criminal-trial exhibits and some 700 civil-trial exhibits. On the wall was taped a separate profile of each juror, listing his or her education and any other inclinations the plaintiffs thought might be relevant, such as feelings about domestic violence or the reliability of DNA testing. To help select the jury, Petrocelli and Lambert turned to consultant Don Vinson and his DecisionQuest. (DecisionQuest is the jury consultant that the prosecutors in the criminal trial called in--and chose to ignore.) Petrocelli & Co. took Vinson's advice, which included using DecisionQuest to prepare all the boards and exhibits explaining DNA evidence. The plaintiffs were particularly happy with the makeup of the jury, which included at least five people with a college education.
Even when Petrocelli laughs, his face rarely appears relaxed. The 43-year-old lawyer looks almost too impeccably dressed even when wearing a favorite Yankee sweatshirt. He stands in sharp contrast to Gelblum, who is dark-haired and bearded and almost always looks relaxed, even when he is tense. But the two key attorneys for the plaintiffs have much in common. A native of East Orange, New Jersey, Petrocelli dreamed of being a musician. He took up the trumpet and migrated to California to major in music at UCLA. Gelblum, who was a theater major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, worked as an actor in New York City. He once played a killer on the television series Kojak. Both men realized the financial restrictions of their chosen fields and went to law school. They joined Mitchell, Silberberg, a 100-lawyer West Los Angeles law firm, where Petrocelli at first specialized in entertainment law and later focused on civil litigation. Gelblum began doing real estate and especially probate litigation, an area he enjoys because "it's messy and human, with kids suing the stepmother who inherited Dad's money."