Law: The Fastest Gun in the West

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Another key to Spence's success is exhaustive preparation. In readying the Penthouse case, he and the staff (two investigators, six aides) at his six-lawyer firm amassed 25 boxes of evidence, including transcripts of interviews with some of the 111 witnesses questioned. For ten days before the trial began, Spence closeted himself in his office and in his new 21-room home at the base of the Teton Mountains and studied every detail. He called in his wife Imaging, 39, and two of their six children to screen "home movies"—videotaped interviews with witnesses—in search of inconsistencies. He also prepares physically by running 15 miles a week and shunning alcohol and tobacco. The cost of all this is reflected in Spence's fees: usually 50% of a winning judgment, rather than the standard 33%. His hefty annual income, he says, is confidential.

Spence's golden years came only after a shattering midlife crisis. In 1968 his 20-year first marriage was failing. He had become a heavy drinker. His effort to be appointed a judge had failed. He closed down his firm, sold all his property and headed for California. When he returned soon thereafter he lost three straight cases —and what was left of his self-confidence.

Spence credits three things for reversing his tailspin. One was his 1969 marriage to Imaging (a name Spence gave her after it came to him in a dream). Another was a change of mission: he rid himself of insurance company clients and began representing underdogs. The third was some sensitivity training that he claims enables him to be open and genuine in front of juries. "You can't fool twelve people very long," he says. "That's the beauty of our system."

His detractors see his courtroom behavior in a different light. "He pushes people to the wall; he creates his own rules," charges one critic. Even admirers concede that Spence is aggressive. Sometimes, says Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler, "he has one foot in the jury box." Replies Spence: "A lawyer who fails to work right on the edge and leave no margin is failing his client." In the little free time Spence allows himself, he likes to write poems and photograph flowers and birds.

In his next big case, Spence will be trying to prove that state and county police shot Polygamist John Singer, an excommunicated Mormon, in the back without justification in the climax of a dispute over whether he could educate his children at home. Viewed in advance, it looks to Spence the way all his cases look: "Absolutely frightening." To hear him tell it, he approaches the trial arena in a state of high tension and fear that he may lose. "All the basic feelings of combat and death are there," he says. And now that many consider him the best in the West —perhaps even in the nation—his anxiety only increased: "Every young gunfighter wants me." —By Bennett H. Beach.

Reported by Richard Woodbury/Cheyenne