GREENWICH, Conn. — A telephone rings incessantly as Michael "Mickey" Sherman juggles calls coming in on his silver Startac mobile phone and the "bling" of his computer announcing instant messages from people on his Internet buddy list. In another room, junior associates are doing the heavy work for a case that could define Sherman's legal career.

"Hang on a minute," the 55-year-old criminal defense attorney tells his visitor, a phone pressed to each ear.

It is less than a week before Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel goes on trial for the 1975 killing of Martha Moxley in Belle Haven, one of the more falutin' parts of this high-falutin' shoreline community.

Dressed in faded jeans, a blue cotton dress shirt and black slip-on loafers, Sherman is holed up in his comfortable-but-efficient "war room" at a location he insists remain secret for security reasons. "Souvenir hunters," Sherman explains, though he does not appear too concerned about a reporter seeing the bits and pieces of the defense case plastered all over the walls on handwritten and typewritten index cards.

A neighbor's overly affectionate golden retriever named "Dutchess" romps from room to room with a small placard hanging from her neck. The card identifies the pet as "the official dog of the Skakel defense team."

Sherman gets off the phones and then begins chatting online with a lawyer friend who recently lost a murder case. He has ostensibly allowed this reporter into his "war room" in order to be able to get information for this profile.

But trying to interview one of the country's most recognized criminal defense lawyers without a television camera or microphone to immobilize him is kind of like being a frustrated William Tell. The arrow and apple are in place but the target is constantly moving.

By his own seemingly apt diagnosis, Sherman suffers from some sort of attention deficit disorder and an addiction to being center stage. Whether it is in a television studio, sipping Grey Goose vodka and soda at Elaine's — a Manhattan watering hole frequented by literary, legal and sports stars — or in the Fairfield County courthouses where he has practiced for 30 years, the lawyer loves to be in the spotlight.

And the light has never been stronger.

When relatives of Michael Skakel called Sherman in July 1998 to see if he was interested in taking the case, the self-described adrenaline junkie said he was elated, but not surprised. A one-judge grand jury had already begun hearing closed-door testimony about the Oct. 30, 1975, killing of Martha Moxley, a pretty and popular 15-year-old neighbor whom both Michael and Thomas Skakel, 15 and 18 years old respectively, found attractive.

Sherman knew about a half-dozen lower Fairfield County trial lawyers were on Michael Skakel's short-list when he went to an introductory dinner with Skakel and a few other nieces and nephews of Ethel Skakel Kennedy. Each lawyer on the list had his own strengths and weaknesses but Skakel, a recovering alcoholic who was painted as a rich, out-of-control brat in three books and a television mini-series, needed someone who could overcome the perception that members of the Kennedy clan believe they are above the law.

"I think they wanted someone who is media savvy. I think I said something like, 'I'm not a no comment kind of guy,'" Sherman recalls.

That is perhaps the understatement of the new millennium. Since he was tapped to defend Skakel almost four years ago, the 5-foot-9-inch Stamford-based lawyer with a million-watt smile has spent more time in front of TV cameras than he has in front of judges.

Substance Beneath the Style?

Sherman's fax cover sheet depicts a defendant telling a judge that he was under the mistaken impression that he was above the law.

Walking into a courtroom to defend a client charged with shooting ducks from the bow of his yacht, Sherman made sure everyone could see the yellow rubber duck feet sticking out of his briefcase.

So why would Skakel chose as his advocate a lawyer who concedes he dislikes research, irritates judges on occasion and has never passed a TV camera without stopping at least briefly? Is there substance beneath the style?

According to a former president of the Connecticut Bar Association the answer is "yes." Hartford lawyer Ralph Elliot said he doesn't know Sherman personally but he hears good things.

"He may be a bit more showboaty than some other lawyers, but he knows his stuff," Elliot said. "His clients are in good hands."

Sherman claims that he lost count of the number of murder cases he has taken to trial around a dozen and says only a "schmuck" would keep such statistics. Known as an accomplished deal-maker, Sherman estimates that he pleaded out about two dozen murder cases when it was clear the trial route was littered with mines.

"I'm good on my feet and I'm good in a crisis. If you want a motion or a brief written, I'm not your guy," says Sherman, who hired 28-year-old lawyers Mark Sherman, his son, and Jason Throne to do the legal legwork for the Skakel defense.

Sherman burst on the national scene for the first time briefly in 1986 when he hired a former member of a deadlocked jury to consult on a rape case Sherman was defending. The female juror advised Sherman during the retrial about issues the first panel debated before deadlocking. The client, who raped his 50-year-old landlady, was convicted at the second trial but Sherman's decision to hire the former juror caused a furor.

The move ruffled feathers in Connecticut's conservative legal community, which was collectively concerned that jurors might be swayed by the fact that an acquittal could get them consulting work later. The controversy nonetheless paid off from a public relations standpoint for Sherman, who got invited onto numerous news and talk programs to defend himself. Eventually, Connecticut lawmakers passed the so-called "Sherman Law" to bar former jurors from accepting such work.

A 1991 case that ended in an acquittal was one of the first trials to be broadcast by a fledgling cable network, Court TV. Sherman served as defense attorney for Roger Ligon of Stamford, who was charged with murder for fatally shooting an unarmed man in a dispute over a parking space.

Sherman successfully employed the post-traumatic stress disorder defense for Ligon, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. "I expected it. It was a tough case and it really woke me up," Sherman says now. "Our defense was considered preposterous but I knew it was the real deal. It was gratifying to see the jury agreed with me."

Born Salesman

Michael Sherman, who also goes by "Mickey" or "Mick," was born in Los Angeles in 1946 and moved with his family to Greenwich, Conn., in 1951. His father, advertising man Maurice Sherman, died when Mickey Sherman was 15 years old. Edith Sherman, who died in 1995, worked several secretarial jobs to support herself, Mickey and two other children.

"I grew up in the slums of Greenwich," says Sherman, who once quipped that his neighborhood had golf courses but could not afford golf carts.

A self-styled class clown and "mediocre" student, Sherman was emcee for the senior class vaudeville show before he graduated from Greenwich High School in 1964. Sherman entered the University of Connecticut that year, majoring in political science. Doing well on the law boards — "Go figure that one out," Sherman says — the young college graduate entered UConn's law school in 1968 and finished three years later. (A spleen enlarged by a bout of mononucleosis kept Sherman out of the Vietnam War).

While at UConn, Sherman made some of the closest friends he has today, including prosecutors and defense lawyers. "Right away people noticed his sense of humor and liked him, God knows why," ribbed commercial airline pilot Jay Knobel, who coincidentally lives in Sherman, Conn.

Knobel and Sherman were fraternity brothers in Sigma Alpha Epsilon. While Sherman personally benefited from creative advertising barter for UConn's student newspaper, Knobel was the paper's business manager. Sherman also wrote the paper's "Dear Dolores" advice column, answering made-up questions with his tongue-in-cheek persona.

After earning his law degree and passing the bar, Sherman worked as an assistant public defender for a year. From 1972 to 1976, when he went into private practice, Sherman was an assistant state's attorney in Stamford Superior Court. If Skakel had been arrested in the Moxley case when it first happened, Sherman, in theory anyway, could have been called on to handle the arraignment if the case found its way to adult court.

Now that he has Skakel as a client to defend, Sherman says he intends to not only win as a matter of law but aims to convince the jury of six men and six women that prosecutors accused the wrong guy.

Is that cocky? Sherman says that, despite outward appearances, he is a hard worker and fierce advocate.

"I think I can come off as cocky and I've heard the word arrogant too," Sherman says. "I think I am misperceived. I am not cocky but rather confident in this case and my client."

And what if Sherman should lose the biggest case of his career, a murder trial in which he accepted as a juror a police officer because the man gave off good vibes? What happens to Sherman's career if, despite the passage of 27 years and numerous well-chronicled investigative blunders, Skakel gets convicted of Martha Moxley's murder?

"I don't care. This case isn't about me. This is about Michael Skakel," says Sherman, who admits he has been "too pumped up" to sleep well lately. "Whatever happens, the goal here is to walk him out of that building a free man and, hopefully, truly exonerated. Everything else is a minor issue."

Mickey Sherman lives in Old Greenwich, where he enjoys playing tennis regularly and riding his Harley Davidson motorcyle. He and his wife Judy, who separated in 1997 but remain friends, have a 26-year-old daughter, California photographer Jamie Sherman, and 28-year-old son, attorney Mark Sherman.