The Only Kind of Washington Lawyer That's Gone Extinct - Washingtonian.com (blog)
At one end of Washington’s legal food chain is K Street, home to swells known as lawyer-lobbyists. At the other is a breed known, when we refer to them at all, as Fifth Streeters: the last-ditch criminal-defense attorneys lurking around Moultrie Courthouse at Fifth and C streets, Northwest, waiting to get picked for your trial. Urban Dictionary defines Fifth Street lawyers as “the bottom-feeders in an industry already consisting of scum-suckers. Fifth Street used to be home to some of the best trial lawyers in DC’s history. That spot on the map had been the heart of the District’s legal world since the 19th century, and by the 1930s, “Go down to Fifth Street and get yourself a good lawyer” was a gentle way of saying, “You’ve got a problem. The options included Charles E. Ford, dubbed the Fifth Street Cicero, a flamboyant 220-pound advocate who once dispatched a client’s first-degree murder charge by dramatically accusing him of manslaughter. Stein, a partner at Stein Mitchell Muse Cipollone & Beato who represented Monica Lewinsky, rented his first office in 1948 for $35 a month at 635 F Street. Source: www.washingtonian.com
