But what the Bobs lack in connections they believe they can make up for in cunning. To date, they have won acquittals in 50 percent of their felony tax cases—a remarkable record, considering that the government wins the vast majority of the tax cases it brings to trial.

In Hollywood, the Bobs don’t want to do the transactional work that many entertainment lawyers specialize in. But as go-to lawyers for the industry elite, they plan to review such deals for clients.

“If you’re an oligarch in Moscow, you need a driver and a bodyguard,” Barnes says. “If you’re a mogul in Hollywood, you need a consigliere. That’s what we will be.”

Alas, their first post-Snipes Hollywood client didn’t pan out. A producer had alleged that one of the major networks had stolen his idea for a series (a common claim and difficult to prove). When the network left the show off its fall schedule, the claim was moot.

Barnes predicts that within 18 months, high-end California clients will make up half the firm’s business; in three years, he says, that portion will be two-thirds. Whereupon the firm’s epicenter will shift from a warehouse in Milwaukee to a deck in Malibu. “We want it to be like the patio in Boston Legal,” Barnes says, citing the TV series about stogie-savoring, nightcap-drinking litigators who often retire to a rooftop patio to mull their cases.

One warm evening, the Bobs head to Nobu Malibu, the swank sushi spot, to meet a business-affairs executive who works at a top independent-movie studio. The dinner marks the start of their push into Hollywood—a test-firing of the engines.

As the maître d’ shows them to their table, the Bobs exchange a look. Just a few feet away—so close they could sample his edamame—sits the aging rocker Ozzy Osbourne. “The Oz-man himself!” Bernhoft recounts later.

Also enjoying a quiet dinner at a nearby table is one of Hollywood’s power couples: Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise’s longtime producing partner (who has since left United Artists to go it alone), and Rick Nicita (then a partner at Creative Artists Agency).

The Bobs have no idea they’re there.

As a waiter brings sake, Bernhoft begins his pitch: Too often, he says, people in trouble think they should hire defense lawyers who are former government prosecutors. The logic is that these attorneys’ enduring connections will be an advantage. “But when is the last time a high-profile celebrity got acquitted of federal criminal tax or conspiracy charges?” he asks—other than Snipes, of course. “Leona Helmsley got rung up. Ka-ching! Martha Stewart! There’s no insider connection that can make a case go away.”

The movie executive is between bites, which is all that keeps him from choking. Relationships not only create outcomes in Hollywood, he demurs; they are the foundation upon which everything rests. “Look, everyone I talk to, I’ve talked to before,” he says, warning Bernhoft that his outsider-as-savior approach will be a tough sell. “Honestly,” he says, “people here are not used to thinking that way.”

Weeks later, Bernhoft and Barnes are poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. From their cabana, they can see the actress Lindsay Lohan, keeping cool. But they are focused instead on a potential client.

Joe Francis isn’t a Hollywood player per se. But the founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire commands attention. In addition to selling videos of naked, drunk women, he drives fast cars, flies private jets, and has a mansion in Mexico where Paris Hilton has been known to party. Francis is under indictment for felony tax evasion. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

This is the Bobs’ kind of case. And now, since a federal judge moved the trial from Reno to Los Angeles, it will be argued right under Hollywood’s nose.

The meeting lasts more than four hours. Cigars are smoked; frozen French-vanilla lattes sipped through straws. Then, in late July, Francis and his new lawyers, the Bobs, arrive in downtown L.A. for arraignment, where the 35-year-old pleads not guilty. Then the Bobs file suit against Francis’ ex-accountant. “The story is a classic Hollywood setup only a screenwriter could imagine,” begins the complaint, which is soon posted on the website TMZ.

“You gotta read this one,” the site gushes.

Francis’ trial, set to begin in spring 2009, is the launching platform the Bobs have hoped for. They are now approaching escape velocity. They think.

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