A 'Cleaner' of Athletes' Dirty Laundry

"With respect to anything in the Mitchell report, the story is dead," Cornwell said. "Except for him. You have to assume Roger's objective was to make this go away with as little pain as possible. Now he's the one suffering the most. I say this all the time: The hardest negotiations are the ones you have with your own clients."

As for the ballplayer who was terrified a story was about to ruin his reputation? Cornwell determined the publication needed the athlete's involvement to have a story. If the player didn't respond to the calls, Cornwell said, there was nothing the publication could do. So the athlete refused to cooperate.

So far, the piece has not run.

'It's About Control'

Those who have worked with Cornwell describe a young lawyer who is able to sift through situations and find ways out of seemingly hopeless predicaments, one who is also masterful at using people's words against them.

But while his sometimes combative personality endears him to many clients, it leaves others rumbling about his aggressiveness, sometimes wondering if he goes too far.

"He's a fine lawyer who will go outside the lines, but I guess that's a good thing if you are on his side," said Brian Watkins, the attorney for sports marketer Lloyd Lake in a lawsuit against New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush, whom Cornwell is helping to represent.

In a recent arbitration dispute between a major league pitcher and a sports memorabilia company, the company's attorney tried to submit a handwritten statement from a witness who had not shown up to the hearing. When Cornwell protested that the paper was useless, the arbitrator agreed. Cornwell then reached across the table, snatching the document, crumpling it and throwing it away.

Cornwell seems to see himself as something like the athletes he represents. Growing up as the child of a surgeon and teacher in Northwest Washington, he clung to the dream of becoming a professional basketball player all the way through high school at Sidwell Friends and college at Tufts, where he was a point guard. At Georgetown, where he went to law school, he sometimes practiced against the basketball team and briefly played professionally for an obscure Egyptian club team while attending school in Cairo.

He often says there were only two things he could be in life: a point guard or a lawyer.

For a few years, while working as an attorney in the office of the most powerful NFL agent at the time, Leigh Steinberg, Cornwell thought he might want to be an agent. Eventually he moved on to the NFL's offices. From there he went to the sports memorabilia company Upper Deck, serving as the company's counsel until a fallout with management landed him back with Steinberg just as Steinberg's firm was breaking up.

A few years later, he was ready to move out on his own as a sports attorney. He did mostly legal work for agents until players' cases started to trickle in. Most were for positive drug tests or performance-enhancement tests. And because Cornwell understood the NFL's drug policy, he was a natural to defend against it.

Soon his name started popping up in stories about athletes who had found themselves in trouble, such as Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams and former Maryland star Shawne Merriman. Often, he tells them to settle rather than fight.