The Boston Globe’s Jonathan Saltzman reports today that Beverly lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, famous from the book and movie “A Civil Action,” is as controversial as ever.
I covered Schlichtmann off and on for 15 years. The last time I caught up with him was in 2000. He was a lot younger and less experienced in the 1980s, when he represented eight Woburn families whose children had suffered from leukemia. But I found him to be an odd mixture of charisma, fierce dedication, secretiveness (even with his own clients) and ineptitude.