Attorney 'good Hollywood' - take two.

Attorney `goes Hollywood' -- take two

Stephen Chrystie is a rainmaker who wants the rain to fall on him.

In the lingo of the legal profession, a rainmaker is a lawyer who creates business. Chrystie is confident of his ability. He has just formed a new firm, Chrystie & Berle, and says he plans to hire about 10 lawyers by August.

The start-up firm seems a reprise of Chrystie's role in the early years of his former firm, Buchalter, Nemer, Fields, Chrystie & Younger (now known as Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger). He stayed with the firm for 24 years.

"When I started, there were eight or nine lawyers," says Chrystie, 51. "It grew to be about 150 lawyers by the time I left." Currently, Buchalter, Nemer is the 12th largest law firm in Los Angeles.

Starting as a specialist in bankruptcy law, the Harvard Law graduate began to amass a sizable stable of show business clients, including Lorimar-Telepictures Inc., Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios and Los Films del Camino, the Argentine-based company that produced "The Official Story." He also represented major lenders to film studios, such as Wells Fargo Bank and Chemical Bank.

At Buchalter, Nemer a former co-worker describes him as strong-willed, sometimes abrasive and having "an enormous ego." The co-worker added. "He was brilliant. He had the ability to grasp the fine points of law that he was just hearing for the first time."

Last year, Chrystie left to join New York-based Shea & Gould. "They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," he says, paraphrasing a character from a well-known Coppola Mafia movie.

But Chrystie's career at Shea & Gould lasted only a year. "I found that when working for a New York firm, the management was firmly in the hands of the New York bosses. It really wasn't suitable for me."

Of starting his new firm, Chrystie & Berle, he says, "It's definitely more satisfying when you feel you have control of what's going on."

Chrystie's partner is Elihu Berle, another ex-Shea & Gould partner who had also worked with Chrystie at Buchalter, Nemer. "He and I have been working together for 16 years," says Chrystie.

And the veteran rainmaker says he won't have to work too hard for the droplets to fall. "Most of the clients I've mentioned I still do business for," he says.