The real Diehl: appearances can be deceiving, opponents of Charlotte's maverick lawyer to the rich and famous have discovered.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Bill Diehl - Cover Story

Bill Diehl leans way, way, waaaaay back, tilting onto the rear casters of his office chair as he gazes up at a ceiling tile, pudgy hands folded upon ample paunch, trademark blond tresses cascading onto shoulders, shirt and chinos rumpled. Charlotte's maverick lawyer to the rich and famous is discussing some fine point of jurisprudence, but what's going through your mind is: If that chair topples, will this overstuffed, unkempt slob ever get himself back up?

If you're his client, though, you make yourself listen. And you obey when he tells you to keep your mouth shut when you leave his office. After all, you're paying him $400 an hour, plus a $5,000 to $50,000 signing bonus to take your case. Clients have ranged from mystics - Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian guru with a taste for Rolls Royces who ran afoul of the feds - to moguls such as Bruton Smith, North Carolina's own race-track rajah.

His hottest case at the moment is defending Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn, accused last year of forcing a woman to perform oral sex. Prosecutors dropped the case without filing charges, but the woman sued, resurrecting the allegations in the civil action.

Diehl, who bears a certain resemblance to a bleach-blonde Sam Kinison, responded as he is wont to do: He filed a countersuit that claims she's a liar, a tart, an exhibitionist and an extortionist. He put a photo of her in a thong bikini in the court file. "They met, she gave him a blow job, she left," he says, summing up his case. "Mr. Shinn didn't get charged because he's not guilty of any crime. This man didn't rape this woman."

That bent for bare-knuckled brawling is one reason Bill Diehl is one of North Carolina's most sought-after trial lawyers. And, billing more than $1 million a year, among its most expensive. He takes both criminal and civil cases. But divorces, at this point, comprise about half his practice. For their money, his clients get a 53-year-old Tortinator, a courtroom killing machine willing to do whatever it takes to waste anyone who gets in his way.

"It doesn't bother me to aggressively attack in a courtroom, even if it means making somebody look bad or be uncomfortable," he admits. "That doesn't cause me lost sleep. I have a sharp tongue. I don't believe in nonsense, and I don't believe in mincing words."

"I tell people he is, without question, the best trial lawyer in North Carolina," says Charlotte family-law specialist Richard Stephens, who has matched wits with Diehl for more than 20 years.

His cases are often raucous affairs. During Bruton Smith's divorce settlement, Diehl claimed the future ex deserved nothing. She was an adulteress, he said, with a Colorado ski instructor "boy toy." The judge disagreed, ordering Smith to pay nearly $21 million alimony. Still, Smith calls Diehl "one of the most brilliant lawyers I have ever met."

When he represented the husband of ex-Mecklenburg County Commissioner Edna Chirico, he argued she shouldn't get custody of their three children because she had had an affair in then read her love letters aloud in open court. Chirico, who lost custody, didn't run for reelection in 1994. When she attempted a comeback this year, her opponent dredged up the infidelity charge Diehl had aired. She lost.

"Bill Diehl," she says, "doesn't care how he goes about winning his cases."

In Greensboro earlier this year, he baited lawyer Carolyn Woodruff, calling her a liar during a recess. When the judge returned, she stood up to complain. Diehl cut in: He had not called her a liar, but a "goddamn liar." And, he told the judge, he did it not once but twice.

"What he does," Woodruff says, "he gets publicity out of acting like this. People think it is good lawyering. It's insecurity and disrespect. He gives good lawyers a bad name."

Those who know him outside the courthouse describe another Bill Diehl, a charming, witty raconteur and affable dinner companion who always picks up the check. "If you read his clippings, you would say he is kind of like a junkyard dog: Get close to him and he'll bite you," says Rick Hendrick, the Charlotte auto dealer and NASCAR racing-team owner Diehl represents in civil cases that grew out of a bribery investigation. "But inside, he has a big heart. He is sensitive. He can play either role."

"It's a little like the Incredible Hulk emerging," says Pam Simon, a Statesville lawyer who specializes in family law. "Somebody once said to me, 'Bill has the most amazing facility, that is, like, one minute you are at a high-school reunion with your best buddy, and the next minute he is jumping down your throat.'"

"People say I talk loud," Diehl admits. "I have been told...